


Letters

by VIII (Valkyrien)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: Ages Altered To Suit, F/M, Gen, No Strict Adherence To Canon Timelines Or Events Only Use Of Them, This Is A Commissioned Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-07 01:10:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 48,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6778918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valkyrien/pseuds/VIII
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rickon Stark hears of the plight of Stannis Baratheon's only child by coincidence, while still a child himself, yet is convinced that she will not succumb to the greyscale which threatens to take her life. He writes to tell her so, setting in motion a chain of events which will entirely change the balance of power in the known world, and lead to a romance the like of which is typically only found in song.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  [Picset](http://valkyrien.tumblr.com/post/145064857404/letters)

 

 

 

   “... sad news, then?” he hears as he tears through the hall after Shaggydog who seems bent on rooting for scraps, following some scent, his mother's voice, and he spares them a glance, the sheaf of letters in his father's hand, his heavy brow, and his sigh.

 

 

   “The Baratheon girl - Stannis' child. She has the greyscale,” he says, and Rickon doesn't understand the weary sorrow in it, but it makes his mother gasp.

 

 

   “His only child,” she breathes, as if she will cry,

 

 

   “Can nothing be done?”

 

 

   “He seeks a cure,” says Rickon's father, and Rickon rolls under the big table with Shaggydog to watch them better,

 

 

   “This is a call for any healer who can be spared, who might be of help.”

 

 

   “You will announce it, then? Even if there is no hope?” Catelyn Stark asks, as if she is half surprised, and Rickon buries his hands in Shaggydog's fur and listens.

 

 

   “Of course, Cate - his only child, even if she will die despite their efforts, we can at least offer the comfort of keeping their hopes alive to the end,” Rickon's father sounds reproachful almost, and he sees his mother step towards him quickly.

 

 

   “Of course, of course we will send out the call, and we will send our sympathies,” she agrees, then with fear,

 

 

   “To think, if it were one of ours - ”

 

 

   “It is easy to forget how we have been blessed with such healthy children, and how many. We are fortunate, Cate - you know how Selyse struggled to bear Stannis even this one girl, and now when she dies, he will be without heirs.”

 

 

   “When she dies?”

 

 

   “Greyscale is a death sentence, Cate, everyone knows it. Perhaps he will keep her by his side to the end, to ease her suffering, but we all know that child hasn't long,” says Rickon's father, and Rickon sees the swish of his mother's skirts closer to the table and then she bends and hauls him from beneath it into her arms, more forcefully than he had expected since he knows he is not in trouble. He resists, but she holds fast, and he only quiets when he realises that she is rocking him as if he were an infant, that her eyes are red and sad.

 

 

   “Yes,” she says, kissing Rickon's cheek and breathing deeply,

 

 

   “Yes, we have been blessed beyond words. Send out the call.”

 

 

   Rickon's father leaves the hall, but his mother remains knelt with Rickon in the warm cradle of her arms, embracing him fiercely as though afraid he will disappear.

 

 

   “Who's dying?” he asks her when at last he grows too restless to tolerate it any longer, squirming in her grasp, and his mother relents, holding him away from her and smoothing his hair although there is little point, for it resists as well as the rest of him, springing back around his face at once.

 

 

   “A little girl, not much older than you,” she tells him sadly,

 

 

   “She's no brothers or sisters, so her parents will be alone when she dies. Your father is sending aid, but there is not much hope.”

 

 

   “So she'll die anyway?” Rickon demands, narrowing his eyes at her, and his mother sighs.

 

 

   “No others have been known to survive the greyscale - the illness she has. She is not likely to live,” she replies honestly, fingers toying with one of his curls.

 

 

   “She'll live,” he tells her with conviction, shrugging away from her as Shaggydog paces around them, eager to be gone,

 

 

   “They'll find a way.”

 

 

   His mother smiles but there are tears in her eyes and she holds his face to hers for a moment.

 

 

   “Oh, Rickon,” she says, the way they do when they think he is being silly, too young to understand or know of what he speaks, so he thrashes until she releases him, springing to his feet proper and insisting,

 

 

   “She will, she'll live!” before tearing away out of the hall before she can think to grab him again.

 

 

   It is many moons before he hears of it again, although he has begun to dream, vividly, of crashing waves and jagged rock beneath his fingers, although these are not things he knows well enough to dream of so clearly, or to have the scent of salt sea air in his nose when he wakes.

 

 

   He hears the word 'greyscale' flung about in the yard, some talk of a miracle, and he remembers his mother's words, how aid was sent to a girl they thought sure to die, and he is curious, for he recalls knowing as surely as he knows Shaggydog's name that she would survive.

 

 

   He ventures indoors although today is a day when he itches to run wild outside in the snow, and he seeks his parents with Shaggydog's senses, finding them in his father's rooms, perusing more papers, and he catches the scent of salt when Shaggydog rises on his hind legs to snap at some things on the table.

 

 

   “Enough, Rickon, take him away,” his father says, irritable, but he is engrossed in some slip of writing between his hands, and Shaggydog jumps up at him to snap at that as well, until Rickon's father pushes him away with one strong arm and Rickon leaps forward to wind his own arms around Shaggydog's neck and demand,

 

 

   “What is that? It smells!”

 

 

   “What?” his mother asks, confused, looking to his father,

 

 

   “What is it?”

 

 

   “The rest of the message from Stannis - his girl was cured, it is a miracle, but he wrote of other matters, too,” says Rickon's father absently as he scans the paper in his hands, and Catelyn nods, but Rickon snorts his impatience.

 

 

   “Greyscale girl? No it isn't - I knew she wouldn't die!” he tells them, annoyed at being discounted, and his mother looks at him curiously.

 

 

   “Rickon, you couldn't know that,” she lectures, then more softly,

 

 

   “You hoped it, that is another thing.”

 

 

   “No,” he insists, and Shaggydog barks to punctuate it,

 

 

   “I knew it. I knew she'd live, I told you! And I'll tell her!”

 

 

   “What?” his father snaps, as if he has barely heard them, and his mother smiles and looks to his father.

 

 

   “Rickon thought Stannis' girl would live, my love, he wants to tell her so,” she says gently, as if this pleases her somehow, or amuses her, and Rickon's father raises his eyes to her for a moment, and they are clouded with something Rickon does not recognise before he glances dismissively at Rickon.

 

 

   “Then do it, but be off - Cate, we must discuss this, there is another matter - ”

 

 

   Rickon's mother looks as serious as his father looks suddenly urgent, and so she cuts across him and says to Rickon,

 

 

   “You may ask the maester to send her a raven, if you wish, Rickon, go on,” and it is all the permission he needs to run off.

 

 

   He has no care for maesters and letters and lessons, does not even care enough to remember the man's name, but he is angry when he has to invoke his mother's word before the man will send the message Rickon dictates and stop lecturing him instead on how if he learnt his lessons he could send his own messages.

 

 

   Finally though, a message is sent, and it must reach her, Rickon thinks, for his mother told him no one survives this greyscale, but this girl who is daughter of someone named Stannis, she survived as Rickon knew she would, so when he dictates that it must reach such a girl he expects it will.

 

 

   It is a simple message because it need not be long, and he doesn't know her name but the maester once he stops fussing about tells him he will address it 'properly', whatever that means. Still Rickon insists it read as follows;

 

 

   _Greyscale girl - I knew you would live. Rickon Stark._

 

 

   -


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

 

   He's all but forgotten about it again weeks later when he sneaks back into the yard after some time in the wilds with Osha and Robb immediately grabs him about the neck and heaves him up in a hold Rickon can't escape, laughing and tickling him all over, and telling him,

 

 

   “You're for it you are - got a letter while you were off Gods know where, Mother's been frantic - who's writing to you anyhow, eh?”

 

 

   Rickon fights to be let go but only half-heartedly, allowing Robb to carry him into the hall swinging from his arms and joking all the way, until his mother descends with her fussing and her insistence upon baths and other nonsense, so he struggles against her and demands,

 

 

   “I got a letter! Robb said there's a letter, I want it!”

 

 

   “Oh, just give it to him, Mother,” Robb says with laughter at the spectacle of Rickon's unruliness, and Catelyn thins her lips at him but gives up, reaches for something in a pocket, and Rickon snatches it away and then darts off in a hurry, his mother's admonishments and renewed demands that he bathe before dinner following him out, and he skirts the walls as sneakily as he can, wanting to be alone so he can look at what he's been sent.

 

 

   He knows enough of letters to make out that it is for him, and he sees that it has not been opened, which is good, but when he opens it himself, he can make no real sense of it, so he abandons his hiding place tucked behind a pillar and goes in search of Sansa.

 

 

   She is in her rooms, studying some bit of cloth and poking about with a needle, and as always she is glad to see him, but she fusses worse than Mother and both hugs him close and complains that he is filthy, that his hair needs cutting, so he shakes her off too, pressing the letter to her face until she withdraws and telling her,

 

 

   “I got a letter - I can't read it. Read it to me, Sansa, please.”

 

 

   In her fussy way, she takes it from him delicately, smoothing it down in her lap and perusing it, and Rickon grows impatient quickly for he knows Sansa reads well and the letter is brief and so it shouldn't take this long.

 

 

   At last she looks up at him with a teasing smile, and says,

 

 

   “Why are you getting letters from girls we don't even know, Rickon? She writes as if the two of you are friends!”

 

 

   “Who does?” he asks, pushing at her shoulders to lean over the paper in her lap once more, but if he couldn't make sense of it right ways up he certainly can't upside down, so he pulls back again in frustration,

 

 

   “What does it say, Sansa! It's mine so you must tell me!”

 

 

   “It is from lady Shireen Baratheon,” Sansa says, moving the paper so Rickon can see it better, her slim finger tracing some of the letters,

 

 

   “See the ' _S_ ' here, just like in my name? And the ' _S_ ' for Stark?”

 

 

   Rickon glares at her for trying to sneak a lesson into things, because that is not why he came to her, but Sansa's smile grows wider and she admonishes,

 

 

   “It's no good looking at me like that, Rickon, if you bothered to study your letters better, you could read this yourself, so you are at my mercy! Do you see the ' _S_ '?”

 

 

   “Yes, I see it - what does the rest say?” he hurries her irritably, and she traces the letter from the beginning, slowly, so that Rickon can follow her reading.

 

 

   “It says, ' _My lord Stark_ ', so you know she must be a proper, educated lady, she knows what to call you - ” Sansa says as if this pleases her, and Rickon snorts.

 

 

   “My name's just Rickon,” he insists,

 

 

   “What about the rest!”

 

 

   “All right, Rickon,” Sansa huffs, and he sees that she will be grumpy soon if he doesn't let her have her head, so he grins at her and kisses her cheek and her smile returns, even if she does fuss,

 

 

   “Don't, you're filthy!”

 

 

   “I'll have a bath when I know what my letter says,” he bargains, and she sighs as if this is the best she could hope for, and relents, continuing to read for him, though she traces the letters still.

 

 

   “She writes, ' _My lord Stark, thank you for having faith in me. Shireen Baratheon_ ',” Sansa reads slowly, then wrinkles her nose and asks,

 

 

   “What does she mean, Rickon? Who is she?”

 

 

   “Greyscale girl!” Rickon whoops, grabbing his letter and dancing around with it, tearing about the room to release the energy built up from standing so long bent over his sister,

 

 

   “Mother and Father said she would die - everyone dies, they said - but I knew she wouldn't, I knew it, so I told her!”

 

 

   Sansa gasps in horror, and he looks at her from where he is jumping all over her bed, sure that this is what offends, but instead he sees that she looks afraid and disgusted, that she is wiping at her hands, so he asks sharply,

 

 

   “What's the matter? I'm not that dirty!”

 

 

   “ _Greyscale_ , Rickon,” Sansa whines, blanched,

 

 

   “It's deadly, it's - it'll be all over that letter, throw it away, burn it! I can't believe I touched it - ”

 

 

   “Don't be stupid!” Rickon shouts at her, suddenly very angry, leaping over the foot of her bed to rush at her and pull at her skirt,

 

 

   “She didn't die, so she won't have it anymore, it's gone, it didn't kill her so it's gone!”

 

 

   “Rickon, give it to me, you don't understand - ” Sansa cries, snatching at his letter, but he holds it away and kicks at her so she won't advance, shouting back,

 

 

   “No, _you_ don't understand! It's not bad - Mother had it in her pocket, I won't let you burn it, it's mine! You're all so _stupid!_ ”

 

 

   He ducks under her arms when she tries to grab at him, and runs out the door, letter clutched in his hand tightly, and he thinks to himself that he must hide it from them, they can't be trusted to understand, it must be hidden for safety, and without thought he finds himself in the crypt, led there by Shaggydog, the dark closing in on them both.

 

 

   Here, he decides, here where the dead lie, where no one comes, here he will hide his letter and none of them will ever find it or take it from him for some stupid reason. He secrets it away carefully, after letting Shaggydog have one final sniff of it, and then goes to hunt up Bran, to ask him to help write back. He doesn't think Bran will mock him or get scared over nothing like Sansa - Bran is too clever for that, and too kind.

 

 

   He and Shaggydog find Bran and Summer in the library, where Bran is already buried in dusty papers, with writing things close by, so Rickon climbs onto the table to sit in front of him and ask,

 

 

   “Will you help me write a letter?”

 

 

   “A letter?” Bran asks, smiling, while Shaggydog and Summer play, jostling his chair and making him grin for a moment.

 

 

   “I got a letter, so I want to write one back,” Rickon explains seriously, because Bran takes letters seriously,

 

 

   “Will you help me?”

 

 

   “Of course,” Bran says easily, already reaching for paper,

 

 

   “Who is it for?”

 

 

   “The greyscale girl - Sansa read her name for me, but I can't write it. It has an ' _S_ ', though,” Rickon tells him, drumming his heels on the table as Bran gets ready to write,

 

 

   “She's called _Shireen_.”

 

 

   “And what do you want to write to her?” Bran asks, and Rickon leans back on his hands on the very edge of the table and tilts his head up as far as it will go, thinking.

 

 

   “She said thank you for having faith in her,” he tells Bran slowly, who murmurs a sound but does not interrupt, so Rickon rocks forwards and crosses his legs, leaning in to look at the empty bit of paper Bran has in front of him, squinting up at his brother through his curls,

 

 

   “What's faith?”

 

 

   “It's believing,” Bran says promptly,

 

 

   “Like having faith in the old gods, that's believing in them.”

 

 

   “Oh,” Rickon huffs, propping his face up on his hands and staring at the paper hard,

 

 

   “Well that's wrong then - I didn't _believe_ she'd get better, I _knew_ she would.”

 

 

   “Is that what you want to tell her?” Bran asks, smiling gently, and Rickon squirms as he thinks about what exactly he wants to tell this girl people are being so stupid about.

 

 

   “Yes,” he decides finally, shredding a loose bit of paper crumpled under his knee,

 

 

   “Faith is stupid. Knowing is better. I knew she wouldn't die, and she didn't.”

 

 

   “How did you know?” Bran asks curiously, leaning forward, and Rickon is about to tell him about the dreams and the salt and how he just knew, when Robb barges in and grabs him, hoisting him over one shoulder as Rickon shouts to be freed and fights and Grey Wind herds Shaggydog out of the library aggressively, keeping him from helping Rickon get loose.

 

 

   “Stop struggling you little beast,” Robb orders, and Rickon kicks him hard in the chest and grins when he hears Robb grunt with it,

 

 

   “Father wants to see you - you made Sansa cry!”

 

 

   “Let me go - put me down - it was her fault - ” Rickon howls, but Robb is too big and too strong and for once he is not letting Rickon win, so there's no help for it and Robb doesn't release him until they're in their father's rooms and Robb lets Rickon tumble to the floor where Shaggydog immediately curls around him, snarling at Robb and snapping at him so he steps back hastily and Grey Wind growls.

 

 

   “Robb, careful,” Catelyn scolds, half-hearted, because Rickon is and will always be her baby and he knows that, but Robb only shoots Rickon a sour look and says,

 

 

   “He kicked me!”

 

 

   “He kicked me, too,” Sansa pipes up from where she's hiding behind their father, and Rickon sticks his tongue out at her.

 

 

   “Rickon, did you kick Sansa?” his father asks, and Rickon glares at where Sansa stands with red eyes, sniffing still.

 

 

   “Not really - she was being stupid!” he defends himself, and his father narrows his eyes.

 

 

   “Your sister is not stupid - what did she do?” he demands, and Rickon glares harder.

 

 

   “I asked her to read me my letter, and she asked who it was from, but when I told her greyscale girl, Sansa got all stupid about it even though there can't be anything on the letter because she doesn't have it anymore!” he explains, impatient and angry, and his father looks momentarily confused.

 

 

   “Have what?” he asks, and Rickon screams in frustration.

 

 

   “This greyscale thing everyone is so scared of! She doesn't have it anymore, like I knew she wouldn't, so there can't be anything on the letter, so Sansa was just being stupid! She wanted to burn my letter!”

 

 

   “Sansa, is this true? You tried to burn Rickon's letter?” Ned Stark asks, and Sansa hiccoughs in shock at having his reproach suddenly directed at her, but Rickon is triumphant.

 

 

   “I - I didn't know until he told me who she was - I was scared - ” she stammers, and their father looks at her sternly so that fresh tears well up in her eyes and her face goes pink. Serves her right, Rickon thinks fiercely.

 

 

   “Sansa, it was wrong of you to try and take Rickon's letter from him. He's right - the Baratheon girl has been cured now, she can no longer infect anyone, I have her father's word on it,” Ned says firmly, and Sansa's eyes flicker to their mother.

 

 

   “But - but what if she wrote before she was cured?” she asks fearfully, and Rickon snarls at her.

 

 

   “She wouldn't be that stupid, not everyone is as stupid as you!” he shouts at her, and their father immediately roars,

 

 

   “ _That's enough!_ Rickon, I won't tell you again - you will not call your sister stupid!”

 

 

   “I'm not sorry!” Rickon shouts back, defiant, and his mother steps in with a gentle hand on his father's arm, and a look at Sansa and then Rickon himself in turn.

 

 

   “There's no need for raised voices,” she says firmly,

 

 

   “Sansa, your father is right - lord Baratheon would not have sent word that his daughter was cured if it were untrue, and he would not have allowed her to send anything while she was still able to infect others. There is no longer any risk to the girl, she was left scarred but otherwise completely cured.”

 

 

   “Scarred?” Sansa asks, tears now gone, but fresh horror on her face,

 

 

   “Very badly? Urgh, I'd rather be dead!”

 

 

   “Why does that matter?” Rickon asks sullenly,

 

 

   “Osha has scars - _I've_ got scars! So has Father, and Robb!”

 

 

   “Yes, dear heart, but they are not ladies. It is a very sad thing for a lady to have scars,” his mother tries to explain, but to Rickon this sounds like nothing more than nonsense,

 

 

   “And greyscale does not leave scars like you're used to seeing - it leaves, well, _scales_ , that look like stone, rough and grey, sometimes blackened. That is why it is called greyscale.”

 

 

   “Like stone?” Rickon asks, instantly intrigued, because he can't imagine scars that look like stone,

 

 

   “Really?”

 

 

   “Yes, my sweet, just like stone - when those who have it are very, very sick, they turn almost all to stone. That is why they're sent away to live on their own, far away from everyone else, so they can't make anyone else sick, or frighten anyone,” Catelyn explains patiently, a look of relief on her face that Rickon knows is because he is not shouting and he is almost still, but Rickon scowls.

 

 

   “They won't send Shireen away because she's scarred, will they? She's not sick anymore!” he insists, because that would be wrong, it would be unfair, if she isn't sick anymore there'd be no reason to send her away, and his mother smiles sadly.

 

 

   “No, they won't send her away now she's cured,” she reassures him, and Rickon narrows his eyes at her.

 

 

   “Good!” he decides, and then makes to leave, because he still has to go and write back, but his father moves to block his path.

 

 

   “Oh, no you don't - you're going with Robb to take a bath like your mother's told you to,” he commands, and Rickon glares at him but submits sullenly when Robb grabs him by the arm, their father's voice following them out,

 

 

   “And no more kicking!”

 

 

   Rickon pulls a face at that but doesn't argue, and he doesn't fight the bath, but as soon as he's dry and freshly clothed he's off running with Shaggydog to find Osha and tell her everything.

 

 

   He finds her in the kitchen, munching on an apple, and he flings himself into her lap, crying,

 

 

   “She wrote back to me, greyscale girl - her name's Shireen and she's made of _stone_ , Osha - just like the runestones we saw! I'm going to write to her and tell her so - ” and then he shrieks with delight at the thought,

 

 

   “Do you think she can read runes too? Like you showed me?”

 

 

   Rickon has no love for letters or lessons, but ever since Osha showed him some of the runestones further North than Winterfell, he has pestered her to teach him their sounds and meanings, making her draw them for him carefully in the ground with her staff or her finger and following them until he knows them far better than the ordinary letters his mother and the maester want him to know.

 

 

   “I don't know, little one,” Osha says thoughtfully, settling her arm around him as he grabs her apple from her hand and takes a big bite, chewing while she talks,

 

 

   “Ain't she a Southerner? Little southern ladies don't learn runes, they haven't any runestones about.”

 

 

   “She can learn,” he's sure,

 

 

   “She knows boring letters - she could learn runes!”

 

 

   “Oh yes? So why don't _you_ learn boring letters then, since you already know the runes? Hmm?” Osha teases, tickling his sides mercilessly, and he shrieks with laughter and throws himself off her lap, rolling away before leaping to his feet again and declaring,

 

 

   “None of the others wanted to help me write to her, so I'll do it - I'll write to her in runes and she'll learn and then no one else will be able to read it!”

 

 

   He's thrilled with his idea, of having a secret, of not having to go to Bran or Sansa or anyone to do this - Rickon prefers to do most things himself, when he can, and Osha just smiles and shakes her head.

 

 

   “You can try, little one, but don't be disappointed if she can't make sense of it,” she warns, and Rickon grins.

 

 

   “She will! I know it!” he whoops, darting in and stealing her apple again, stuffing it in his mouth and then tearing off back to the library to use Bran's writing things.

 

 

   Bran's gone, but the things are still on the table, so Rickon sits down and begins to carefully ink the runes into the paper left there.

 

 

   He doesn't know how to write very well, how words are supposed to look, or at least not very many, but Osha taught him to read the runes and understand them, and how to write them out, so he does his best with the sounds, knowing what the signs are meant to sound like and what he wants to say, and when he's done there are splotches of ink on his hands and his clean clothes and the paper, but he studies his message and thinks that if the girl made of stone is clever, she'll understand.

 

 

   It's meant to say, ' _Didn't have faith. Knew. Knowing is better,_ ' and he reads it more than once to make sure, and then decides to write his name on it with boring letters next to hers as best he can, like she wrote it in her letter, so they'll know it's for her and she'll know it's from him, and then once he is satisfied, he takes it to be sent.

 

 

   This time when the maester goes on about lessons, Rickon tells him with sharp pride that he wrote this letter himself, so he doesn't need lessons, and watches it be sent off before he leaves to find Osha again, but he thinks that just in case Osha is right and southern ladies really can't learn runes, it might be best if Rickon learnt to write properly with boring letters, because he wants to know all about this girl who is made of stone now.

 

 

   -


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

 

   Shireen Baratheon has never been a spoiled child - even before her illness she could never have been called that; her father lacked both the wealth and the character to spoil his daughter. She is afforded many privileges though, greatest among these her education, which is a thing her father has always held to be of grave importance, and because she has always been such an eager student and she since her illness has had so few pleasures in life but books and learning, these are granted her freely whenever she asks, which is often.

 

 

   Indeed, now that she is no longer confined and thought likely to die - now that she is, and still it is only whispered tentatively by most, because they cannot believe it is possible, _cured_ \- she is instead hampered by the lingering proof of what she has survived.

 

 

   Her face is ruined, and some of her neck, the spread of the disease that should have claimed her life now set to hinder her for the rest of her days, for no one will so much as touch her anymore but her father, Ser Davos, and maester Cressen.

 

 

   Shireen Baratheon is the loneliest little girl in the world, the latter will say, the guilt of being unable to save her himself weighing upon him always now, and because there is little that can be done for a child whose own mother still recoils at the sight of her, he does all that he can. Thankfully, she is the least troublesome child he has ever known, and she is content as she regains her strength to read and take lessons, asking questions and feeding her curiosity about all that lies beyond Dragonstone, all that she is likely never to see for herself.

 

 

   It is why the maester feels such tentative optimism when the raven comes bearing a message from the North and addressed to Shireen alone - her simple pleasure at there being someone willing to write to her directly is a joy in itself, but when she tells Cressen of the contents of the missive, of the simple words of another child who despite not knowing Shireen at all had such faith that she would be well, he allows himself an old man's foolish hope that she may yet be able to make a friend in the world, even if that friend has not yet been tested in their resolve by her scars.

 

 

   “The Starks - are they Daddy's friends?” Shireen asks, with wide and curious eyes, dark blue as the waves that beat at Dragonstone unceasingly, and Cressen smiles at her indulgently, for if she so wishes he will tell this child everything there is to know of the North and its families, if only it will make her smile.

 

 

   “The Starks,” he tells her, doing his best to make it engaging, to keep her interest and occupy her mind,

 

 

   “Are great Lords of the North. From their mighty castle of Winterfell they rule - in days of old, they were called Kings in the North, but that custom is passed, and their allegiance is to your uncle the King - ah,” he says to himself, pulling the book he wants from the shelf and laying it out before her to look up what she wants to know,

 

 

   “See here, Shireen - that is Winterfell, there,” he points, then turns the pages and points again,

 

 

   “And that is the sigil of the Starks - a direwolf, it is called.”

 

 

   Her sweet clever face is alight with fresh knowledge, and Cressen busies himself with setting out writing implements and paper for her, knowing she will no doubt wish to write back, and distracting himself from the fresh guilt he can't help but feel at how her smile does not touch her grey cheek.

 

 

   “And who is Rickon Stark?” she asks, her little fingers smoothing over the letter gently, tracing the words,

 

 

   “He writes very well...”

 

 

   “I believe,” Cressen says, furrowing his brow and searching his mind, then going to another shelf to search for a book which may have the answer she seeks, pulling it down to leaf through it until he finds the names,

 

 

   “I believe that he is the youngest Stark child - a little younger than you - yes, yes, here it is, do you see?”

 

 

   He lays that before her as well, letting her find it on the page for herself, and she does, and her eyes widen but then grow sad, and she whispers,

 

 

   “They are so many...”

 

 

   “Yes,” Cressen acknowledges, then removes the book, not liking how it seems to upset her,

 

 

   “The Starks have always had large families.”

 

 

   Shireen makes a sound to indicate she has heard him, but when he returns from replacing the offending book, Cressen sees that her face has changed again - now all his own silly hope for her is reflected in her little face, childish and pure, as she almost caresses the scrap of paper meant for a letter, perhaps the first kind thing another child has ever done for her.

 

 

   “Do you suppose he wrote it himself?” she asks softly, and Cressen doesn't like to spoil the thought of it, but he does not think it likely that the youngest Stark boy, younger even than Shireen, still young and unchecked enough to be so blunt in writing at all, actually put pen to paper so neatly.

 

 

   “He is younger than you, my dear, the youngest son of his house, and the Northern lords are not known to give their children quite so comprehensive an education as your father insists you receive,” he tells her gently, wishing to preserve her happiness, how enchanted she is with this little gesture, however unimportant it might seem, however trivial,

 

 

   “You are extremely fortunate. There are many young ladies even of equal birth to yours who are not so well educated as you.”

 

 

   “I know, maester Cressen,” she says, smiling up at him sweetly,

 

 

   “I have you to thank. Do you think his maester wrote it for him, then?”

 

 

   “I should think it likely,” Cressen says,

 

 

   “It is well-penned. Either a maester or perhaps one of his older siblings, a finer scribe than he is yet.”

 

 

   “But _his_ words,” she mumbles, re-tracing them, and then casting a troubled gaze to Cressen,

 

 

   “Don't you think? It's what _he_ wanted to say to me?”

 

 

   “Absolutely, my lady - who could doubt it, when it is so unlike a proper letter should be!” he replies with exaggerated, teasing mirth, and she rewards him with the banishment of her concern, looking with renewed happiness to the little missive as if to read it once more and assure herself that these are truly the words of another child.

 

 

   “It was kind, wasn't it?” she asks, and although he is not certain she needs his response he agrees,

 

 

   “It was, my lady. Both kind, and wise.”

 

 

   “I must write back,” she decides, reaching now for the things he has made ready for the task, setting aside her letter most delicately, as if having survived the journey South it may now disintegrate if handled with anything less than the utmost care, and he sees the thoughtfulness she takes on when she is reading overcome her, as she thinks on how to reply.

 

 

   “I shall write, ' _My lord Stark_ ' - oh, that is right, isn't it?” she asks, pen hovering, unsure, and he smiles at her.

 

 

   “Yes, that's the right address, very well remembered,” Cressen praises her, for although her father is not cold to his only child, he is not a warm man either, and Shireen is not a girl used to kindnesses even from those who love her best.

 

 

   “Oh good - then I shall write that,” she says, shaping the letters with care and letting them set to avoid smudges,

 

 

   “And I will tell him thank you for having faith in me.”

 

 

   “I am sure he will be glad of your reply, my lady,” Cressen tells her, tempering his fondness with courtesy because it is in these moments that he, old fool that he is, sometimes thinks of what it would have been like to have a bright and studious little girl of his own to teach and cherish, and he can't allow himself to dwell on it lest he grow sentimental.

 

 

   “Do you really think so?” Shireen asks quietly, setting her pen down, tiny fingers meticulous in their task and then ghosting across her ruined cheek, the self-awareness heartrending.

 

 

   “This Stark boy wrote to you first, my lady, unbidden, asking nothing, offering support, wishing you well in your time of need,” maester Cressen says with all the dignity and wisdom of his age and station behind his words, needing to convince this little girl that she will not always be ill-received in a world unsuited to her,

 

 

   “Were you both full grown it would amount to a swearing of fealty. I think you may trust the gesture was well meant, and that your reply will be well met.”

 

 

   “Thank you,” she says in her smallest voice, watery as if she means to weep, but she blinks it away and smiles through it, hopeful now, and asks,

 

 

   “May we send it now?”

 

 

   “Of course, I will show you how to make it ready and send it yourself, so you will know the way of it should there ever come a time I am not here to help you,” Cressen tells her, and when he bends to help ready her neatly written little reply, Shireen instead curls her hand into his for a moment and holds it, and the trust, the faith, in her face when she says seriously,

 

 

   “You'll always be here,” makes him clear his throat of the tears he could shed for this sad, lonely child.

 

 

   When they send her message on raven's wings, he says nothing of how Shireen continues to watch the sky long after the bird has passed from sight, and he prays that night and all nights after that Rickon Stark may be blessed for what he thought to do for a little girl he has no cause in the world to care for, and that he may reply, for although Shireen herself says that she expects nothing, is grateful for what kindness she has already been given, maester Cressen wants for her a world where she can expect to be valued, her words deemed as important as she deems those of others.

 

 

   Where she may hope, as he hopes for her, though he is only a sentimental old fool, that she will be loved as dearly as she deserves.

 

 

   -


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

 

   Though maester Cressen well knows how long it may take any raven to reach Winterfell and thus how long it may take any raven to return from that northern stronghold, he finds himself in the time after Shireen has sent her reply to Rickon Stark growing concerned with each day that passes and sees no message for her in return.

 

 

   Silly old fool, he thinks to himself often as not, but still, the look of disappointment on Shireen's face, though quickly banished or hidden, is enough to cause Cressen to redouble his prayers for her to be allowed to keep this new hope of a friend, even if they never meet. Perhaps, he even catches himself thinking as he is witness to her continued rejection by all those who are not marked as she is, that would be for the better, for a friend who cannot see that which makes her different and feared is a friend who will know her only for the sweetness of her heart and the openness of her mind.

 

 

   Still though, with every day that passes without a reply from the North, maester Cressen sees Shireen's young hope wither, although she says little of it, and so he pours his efforts into creating more challenging and exciting lessons for her, to keep her occupied with learning.

 

 

   He embarks upon a series of lessons to teach her of each of the houses and their lands, easily securing the use of the Painted Table for a teaching tool from her father, for while Stannis is not an indulgent man, something which invariably meets with his approval is proof of his daughter's intellect and that it is put to use and her time not being wasted with matters he considers to be frivolous. Naturally, learning better the ways of the realm is a very serious matter indeed and so with Stannis' blessing maester Cressen uses the Painted Table to divert Shireen's attention from something that may never happen.

 

 

   Or at least, he tries to.

 

 

   Shireen insists that they begin 'from the top', when maester Cressen suggest they begin with Dragonstone and the lands of her family, and he proves himself a silly old man as she proves herself to have a stronger will than perhaps any would believe when he tries to convince her, and she simply says,

 

 

   “I don't think we should start in the middle - you taught me that the North is where the First Men came from. Shouldn't we start at the beginning, from the top?”

 

 

   There is no arguing with her logic, after that, and of course nor can he bring himself to do anything more than sigh and heed her wishes even though the purpose of this exercise was to take her mind off the North and all that lies there, and so they begin their lessons.

 

 

   Shireen is delighted with the table and how it allows her to follow borders new and old as maester Cressen explains them to her, how she can trace roads and trading routes and find how many of her tiny hand-spans lie between keeps and castles.

 

 

   It is during one such lesson, still far too soon to expect any reply to Shireen's message, that he is outlining to her the relationship between the older houses of the North, and her mother comes upon them unexpectedly.

 

 

   “What is this?” lady Selyse asks with cold suspicion from the doorway, entering the room and skirting the length of the table but making sure to keep her distance from her daughter, and Shireen looks up from where she was diligently noting the placement of Last Hearth.

 

 

   “My lady,” maester Cressen bows to her as best he can with his creaking back,

 

 

   “We are at lessons.”

 

 

   “In here? On whose authority?” lady Selyse demands, and maester Cressen is about to reply when Shireen pipes up,

 

 

   “Daddy said we could! It's important I learn all about the realm, he said - I'm learning about the North!”

 

 

   The brightness of her voice, how clearly she is enjoying herself, seems to grate upon her mother, for she turns her disapproving gaze to her daughter and tilts her chin up to look even further down upon her, her distaste obvious as she states,

 

 

   “The North is a savage wasteland. You should be learning about the South, first,” and then she turns her disapproval upon Cressen and accuses,

 

 

   “Why does she not learn of her own lands?”

 

 

   “My lady, I thought it best we begin at the beginning, as it were, with the peripheral houses and lands, before moving on to the more central lands, as that is a more intricate history and the relationships between houses more complex,” maester Cressen replies with careful deference, choosing his words slowly,

 

 

   “I thought the deeper histories of the South might prove too much as yet, for lady Shireen's young mind.”

 

 

   Lady Selyse regards him with a sharp look for a long moment, and then says stiffly,

 

 

   “Very well. Carry on, maester.”

 

 

   Once she has swept from the room imperiously, Cressen rubs his hands over his face wearily and then looks to Shireen, whose prior enthusiasm is all but vanished.

 

 

   She is looking upon the table dejectedly, her little hand resting near to the markings depicting Winterfell, and after a long silence, she gazes up at him with childish sorrow.

 

 

   “Is it really a terrible place?” she asks quietly, and Cressen sighs and then smiles at her gently.

 

 

   “No, child. Harsh, yes, but not terrible,” he tells her, for it's clear she is thinking on how a place her mother obviously regards with such derision can be the home of the Stark boy, who has shown Shireen such unsolicited kindness,

 

 

   “Remember in our lessons on creatures of nature, we discussed that all creatures like their own home best, are suited to their own place better than to anywhere else?”

 

 

   Shireen nods, her face now solemn, and Cressen smiles at her encouragingly, nodding,

 

 

   “Good, good - well, we are no different. We are creatures just the same, albeit more sophisticated than beasts of the field, and we too like our own places best. No Southerner would prefer the Northern ways and climes, it's true, but neither would any Northerner much like our ways and climes. We are all each best suited to the places we hail from, much like any beast or bird or plant. Do you understand?”

 

 

   “I think so...” Shireen says slowly, then frowns down at the surface of the table and asks,

 

 

   “So I could never live in the North, then?”

 

 

   “Oh, I, ah,” maester Cressen blusters, thinking on all he knows of how the northerners fear disease even more than southerners do, how he knows that very far north those who contract the greyscale are killed to prevent the spread of it, and he looks at this precious child who was spared against all odds, and finds he cannot tell her the truth, so instead he smiles at her.

 

 

   “I am sure you could if you set your mind to it, child. Remember that there is not much we cannot achieve with a keen mind and a firm will. Now come, we were interrupted - find Last Hearth again,” he says, and thankfully Shireen obeys easily, and they speak no further of it that day.

 

 

   Indeed although her fascination with her new lessons and with the North and all its rich history continues, even extends to asking Cressen to show her all the books on Dragonstone that deal with the matter, Shireen says nothing more of the Starks, save for what comes up in their lessons, or of the reply Cressen knows she still secretly hopes to receive, and so he also remains silent on the subject, not wanting to upset her or remind her that nothing has yet been heard.

 

 

   He blames his age for his failure to be more careful when some time later, he is collecting all the missives to be presented to Stannis, and he misses the one from Winterfell, so that it falls into the pile meant for Shireen's father, and thus is noticed and remarked upon both by him and lady Selyse, who for once is present.

 

 

   “Cressen, what is this?” Stannis asks sharply, his wife glancing at it with ill-concealed interest, and Cressen realises his error.

 

 

   “Ah, my lord, that is - it is addressed to the lady Shireen, I beg pardon - ” he begins, but Stannis turns it over in his hands and Selyse frowns at it and demands,

 

 

   “Who would be writing to _her_? From - ”

 

 

   “I beg pardon, my lady, my lord,” Cressen hastens to interject,

 

 

   “It slipped my mind - after the lady Shireen was healed and it was made known widely, she received a message from Winterfell to tell her that they had heard of her recovery and were glad of the news. The lady Shireen replied to thank them for their kind gesture, under my guidance - no doubt they merely return the courtesy.”

 

 

   Selyse's mouth twists sourly, but Stannis merely nods once, and sets the sealed message to one side, remarking,

 

 

   “That was well done. The Starks are an honourable house. Cressen, you will see that Shireen gets this and replies in whatever manner is most appropriate. We could do worse than strengthen our ties there.”

 

 

   “To the _Starks_?” Selyse squawks, affront in her voice, and Stannis sends her a quelling look.

 

 

   “Yes, to the Starks. They sent us aid when Shireen lay ill, they sent their sympathies, they are a noble house, and I see no reason why Shireen should not return her own correspondence. In time she will be a lady in her own right, it is well for her to learn how to tend her ties and do us credit in these matters,” he says stonily, and Selyse's mouth thins further, but she nods her head.

 

 

   “As my lord wishes,” she replies tightly, and Cressen rescues the little message quickly and tucks it into his sleeve, waiting to be dismissed before going to Shireen at once.

 

 

   The child is to be found on a balcony, today, singing into the wind as it makes her hair dance about her thin shoulders, and maester Cressen smiles to see that she is still innocent enough despite her suffering that she can enjoy such simple childish things.

 

 

   “A letter is come for you, child,” he calls to her, not wishing to brave the whip of the wind this high, and she whirls to face him, her face alight.

 

 

   “Truly? Is it - ”

 

 

   “I believe it is from Winterfell, my lady, yes,” he confirms, retrieving it from the depths of his sleeve and holding it out for her to take, as she dances towards him on her toe-tips, taking it carefully and then moving inside where there is no chance the gales will steal it from her.

 

 

   She brings it to a table and opens it neatly, smoothing it out to read, and then her face falls.

 

 

   “What is it, my lady?” Cressen asks quietly, not wanting to anticipate any disaster but fearing the worst. He had thought, as Stannis seemed assured of, that the Starks were yet an honourable house, but the North fears greyscale and Cressen does not think lord and lady Stark would be above forbidding their youngest child from corresponding with Shireen if they shared the widespread view of her illness typical to the region. Sending aid is one thing, but allowing the taint to touch one's own children, even so distantly... Cressen prays silently that he is mistaken in his fears.

 

 

   “I can't understand it,” Shireen mumbles, her face frustrated,

 

 

   “I don't understand these markings - I can't read it.”

 

 

   “May I?” Cressen asks, and she moves aside to allow him to cast his eye over it, and then he permits himself a smile, and tells her,

 

 

   “Ah, my lady - I do believe this comes from the hand of young lord Stark himself. These markings, they are runes.”

 

 

   “Like on the great stones you spoke of? Far in the North?” Shireen gasps, instantly enthralled, and maester Cressen laughs softly.

 

 

   “Precisely so, child. Yes - they are poorly written, but these are runes, that much I can recognise,” he tells her and she moves close again, her clever eyes devouring the markings, her keen mind seeking the sense of them.

 

 

   “Can you read them? Read them to me?” she asks excitedly, and Cressen shakes his head ruefully.

 

 

   “I am sorry, my lady - I have never had a need to read the runes, I can only recognise them for what they are. But there are books which tell of their meanings, they can be read,” he reassures her, and she looks at him curiously.

 

 

   “Of course they can,” she says promptly, with her child's logic,

 

 

   “If they can be written, they can be read.”

 

 

   “Indeed,” Cressen praises her judgment, and she squints at the markings more closely.

 

 

   “Do we have such books? About their meaning?” she asks then, and Cressen sighs.

 

 

   “I must disappoint you, child, we have no such books at Dragonstone,” he says with regret, then hits upon a solution and continues more positively,

 

 

   “But perhaps, if you wish, I could petition your father for the materials? To aid in your further education? You are of an age now where the study of languages would be to your advantage, and the runes are the written language of the Old Tongue...”

 

 

   “Really? You would?” she cries, bright and high with pleasure, and he smiles at her, all indulgence.

 

 

   “Of course, child. I am tasked with your education, it is my duty to see that it is as broad as can be, with what means are available to us,” he says proudly, and is overwhelmed by the suddenness of the child flying at him to wind her little arms about him and then dart up to kiss his cheek as he bends over the message and she thanks him repeatedly in her sweet voice.

 

 

   “I will go to your father directly,” he promises her, the surge of affection he feels for her and how she blooms under the slightest positive attention propelling him back to standing and leading him to pass a hand over her windswept hair, smiling at her broadly as she laughs back with such happiness.

 

 

   “Thank you, maester Cressen, thank you so much,” she trills, and then returns to her study of the unreadable message as Cressen leaves her to find Stannis once more and plead on her behalf.

 

 

   If her father is unwilling to extend himself on this, Cressen has already decided, there are other avenues. If nothing else, Cressen knows that if asked, Ser Davos will gladly scour the realm for a key to little Shireen's problem. He has done so before in far more dire circumstances, after all, and this is not so insurmountable a one as that. Cressen himself will gild any palm to ensure that he not fail Shireen again, that what few sources of pleasure she has left to her may be safeguarded.

 

 

   -


	5. Chapter 5

 

 

 

   The inkwell shatters against the stone of the hearth with a sharp sound that mingles with Rickon's own scream of frustration and Shaggydog's echoing barks, and he tears the papers to shreds and then flings them away as well, Shaggydog snapping at them as they drift to the ground, and then Rickon slumps forward onto the table and digs his nails into the wood, screwing his eyes shut.

 

 

   “What's all this, little one?” he hears Osha's voice ask, amused but kind, and then the slick crunch of glass under boots, and Rickon mumbles a groan into the table but does not reply, and he hears and feels her sit down next to him, and allows her to pull him up with gentle hands and drag him into her lap instead, and he goes without a fight but does not look at her, staring pointedly past her shoulder into the fire and letting his eyes sting.

 

 

   “Letters are stupid - I don't want to learn anymore,” he mutters sullenly, and Osha rocks him slightly, humming under her breath, and before he knows it he has told her,

 

 

   “It doesn't matter. She didn't write back.”

 

 

   “The southern girl?” Osha asks him, and then she chuckles against his hair and he clenches his fists hard and scowls, but Osha kisses his temple and coos,

 

 

   “Oh, little soldier - you're too young yet to throw fits for heartache.”

 

 

   Rickon immediately pushes away from her and shouts,

 

 

   “I'm not!” but Osha doesn't let him go or flinch at being howled at, like she never does, she just laughs warmly and shakes her head.

 

 

   “No, of course you're not,” she agrees simply, drawing him back into the hug,

 

 

   “Of course you're not... But you are learning this so you can write to her properly, aren't you? Like a real little lord?”

 

 

   Rickon grumbles a sound into her shoulder and then hooks his chin over it while Osha rubs circles into his back to loosen his shoulders, because he doesn't want to have to admit it when he told her as much days and days and days ago. It's why he's been trying so hard. If he's going to be getting another message from Shireen, he wants to be able to read it without asking anyone's help.

 

 

   To do that, he needs to understand how to build and write words properly, so he's been trying harder at his lessons and Bran's been helping him, but whenever Rickon sits down to practice on his own, it just seems so pointless and without anyone there to guide him he gets frustrated and angry, and it's been so long now since he sent that last one to her and she hasn't written back, so what's the use of learning any more if he's not going to be getting any more letters?

 

 

   Glaring into the fire he thinks about how he's still got hers hidden away, that he sometimes goes down to look at it but is very careful not to be followed in case anyone harbours any thoughts of stealing it for some silly reason, Sansa's attempt still fresh in his memory.

 

 

   He knows all the letters and words of it by now, and he also knows that she is clearly much better at writing boring ordinary letters than he is, just like he knows now that he's been trying at his lessons that his reply to her was very poorly spelt and that if she ever manages to learn runes, she'll see that at once, which makes him even angrier than the knowing that it's been so long now, she probably won't ever write back to him.

 

 

   Maybe, he thinks, she did know how to read it and she didn't want to write back because it was so badly written and she's a proper lady like Sansa's always talking about, who writes neatly and calls him like he's supposed to be called according to all those stupid rules everyone's always telling him he needs to pay more attention to, so him and his runes are beneath her notice.

 

 

   He's asked his mother and she said Shireen is not that much older than him, but she's either just much cleverer than him at this whole writing mess or she started learning earlier, to be so good at it, and it makes him feel small and angry and silly and he hates that, so he tries not to think about it, but still, it worries him, like it worries him that when Arya heard about it she laughed for a long time and then said that if Shireen Baratheon really is a proper lady her parents probably aren't going to let her write to a wild thing like Rickon.

 

 

   Rickon doesn't think Shireen is like Sansa, who is apparently a very proper lady, even though he doesn't know much about her he doesn't think she's like that, he feels that she's not, but he doesn't know anything about her parents and he knows that his own mother and father have largely given up trying to control him, but Shireen is a girl and she's got no brothers or sisters to take up her parents' attention and time, so maybe Arya's right and the reason she hasn't written back is that she's not allowed to.

 

 

   “Osha...” he mumbles into her shoulder, squinting at the ink staining the hearth now, and the shards of glass glittering in the firelight, and she hums to let him know she's listening, still smoothing circles into his back, which is nice,

 

 

   “Why hasn't she written back? It's been long enough...”

 

 

   “Well,” Osha says thoughtfully, as he twists his fingers into her hair and her sleeve,

 

 

   “Maybe it took the raven a while to get there. Or maybe it's like I told you and she couldn't read what you wrote her because southerners don't learn runes. Or maybe your brother gave me something to give you when I passed him in the hall and he didn't want to try giving it to you himself because you've been snapping at everyone for days now and he wants to keep his fingers.”

 

 

   The words sink in all at once and Rickon starts in her embrace, practically standing on her lap and looking at her with wide, wild eyes, mouth open as she laughs heartily.

 

 

   “Give it to me!” Rickon demands at once, beginning to claw at her pockets and pull at her arms so she'll move and he can find it,

 

 

   “Is it my letter? Is it? Osha, give it to me! I want to see it!”

 

 

   Her laughter jangles against his cries, and she fends him off through gales of it, squeezing her eyes shut in mirth, and Rickon pulls at her shoulders as Shaggydog  places his paws on her leg and barks at her and Rickon cries,

 

 

   “It's mine, Osha - you're mean!”

 

 

   His eyes prickle as she continues to laugh like she's never been so entertained in her life, and Shaggydog growls and nudges her harder, and she takes hold of Rickon's sides and tickles him until he shrieks, laughing,

 

 

   “Worth it to see your face, you terror - oh, yes, you can have your little letter from your little lady if you stop breaking this old place apart! Do you promise?”

 

 

   “Yes - haha - Osha, stop it - I _promise_ \- ” he howls, and she releases him, lets him roll onto the floor amid scraps of torn paper, Shaggydog pushing him up to stand again at once, and Osha wipes at her eyes as Rickon swipes at her hands impatiently until she delves into her tunic and pulls out the letter, handing it over to be snatched away and cradled to Rickon's chest while he dances across the room so she won't try and take it back, kicking up paper bits as he goes.

 

 

   “What are these then?” he hears her ask as he tears at the seal, and he doesn't look at her until Shaggydog growls and then he glances up quickly to see that she's got some of the shredded papers in her hands and is trying to piece them together to make sense of them.

 

 

   “Nothing!” he yells, putting his letter between his teeth and then darting in to grab the paper Osha's holding and sweep across the room collecting all the rest of the bits in a whirl and throwing them into the fire, sending Osha into a fresh bout of chuckles.

 

 

   “Oh, nothing he says, nothing that starts with an ' _S_ ', I'll wager - alright, alright, little one, I'll let you alone,” she holds up a hand defensively but continues to chuckle when Shaggydog growls at her again, and then she rises and dusts herself off where his feet and Shaggy's have left muck on her legs, and she walks towards the door and leaves without a backwards glance.

 

 

   Rickon waits until Shaggy has heard her go far enough before he takes his letter from his mouth and then sets to opening it, hands careful despite his excitement.

 

 

   He sees runes, all over the page, and he feels a sense of victory and satisfaction - he was right all along, about everything!

 

 

   Shaggydog curves around him and they fall down together onto the floor so Rickon can sprawl out and kick his legs and spread his letter in front of him to read, Shaggydog resting his great head next to it to sniff it thoroughly.

 

 

   Salt and ink and ice and ashes fill Rickon's nose as he begins to read.

 

 

_Rickon - I am sorry it took so long to reply. I didn't know runes so I had to wait for Ser Davos to find me a book to teach me about them because there aren't any here on Dragonstone, and he says he had to sail a good long way for one, and then I had to learn before I could read your letter! You must be very clever to know another language already - maester Cressen says runes are the words of the Old Tongue, but I don't know that either, so thank you for writing in Common even if it was in runes. I have asked to learn the Old Tongue too, but it will be a long time before I am any good at it, so you are welcome to write to me in runes now that we both know those - it will be good practice for me, and it's so much fun that no one else here will be able to read them! - but please write to me in Common or I won't be able to reply for years. ~~If you do still want to write to me,~~ will you please tell me how you knew about me getting better? You're right, knowing is better, so I'd like to know too. I am very glad you wrote to me. Thank you._

 

 

   It takes him a while to read all of it, and he wonders at the part that is almost completely scratched out because her last letter was so neat and tidy and so is this one for the most part, but he thinks perhaps she did not have enough paper to start again, and has to put his nose almost completely to the paper to try and make it out, but he manages, and then he reads it all again, and then once more, to keep it all safe in his mind in case something should happen to it, and then Shaggydog noses at his hand and he looks down and realises that he has been rubbing his grubby forefinger over the carefully etched runes that make up her name at the end all this while, so that it is now a little faded, and he frowns at himself.

 

 

   “Get off, Shaggy,” he mutters, sitting up and holding his letter close, casting about for the means to reply, but again the ink and glass still shining on the stone of the floor wink at him to remind him of his earlier bad temper, and he scowls at them, too. Shaggydog licks his face to catch his attention, and then starts for the doorway, and Rickon understands where they're going and takes off in pursuit, almost running down Jon in the next corridor.

 

 

   “Rickon - did Osha give you - ” Jon begins, a serious, confused, slightly worried look on his face as he holds Rickon up after righting them both, and Rickon whoops and waves his letter in Jon's face and then licks his cheek and jumps towards the floor as Shaggydog jumps up and plants his paws on Jon's shoulders to make him stumble, licking his other cheek, and Ghost barks at all the excitement as Rickon and Shaggydog run off, Rickon yelling,

 

 

   “Thank you!” before they round the next corner because he knows now that it was Jon who sent Osha to find him and who was right that Rickon's been in a black mood ever since he half convinced himself that he was never going to get a reply, and of course Rickon and Shaggy would never eat Jon's fingers but Rickon understands why he'd rather send Osha instead of go himself.

 

 

   Shaggydog precedes him barging into Bran's room, and Bran turns around half-tangled in the sleeves of a tunic he's putting on as Shaggydog sniffs around until he finds what they're looking for among Bran's things and Rickon dives on it, holding the little container of ink aloft with a war cry and ignoring Bran's indignant squawk in favour of sprinting off again back in the direction from whence he came.

 

 

   The sooner Rickon can write back to Shireen so she won't have to be worried that Rickon doesn't want to write to her, the sooner he can go and pester Osha to begin teaching him the Old Tongue in earnest, and the quicker Shireen can reply to him in return.

 

 

   -


	6. Chapter 6

 

 

 

   Shireen wakes as she does most mornings now - afraid, and confused by the scent of the sea in the air where moments before she could swear her lungs were thick with smoke. She dashes the tears from her face and sniffs wincing against the fresh ones that well in her eyes when her raw fingers scrape against the roughness of her cheek and encounter the salt.

 

 

   Her mother objects to her lessons with maester Cressen, Shireen knows - she complains that it is not fitting for a lady of Shireen's birth to be taught all such things as she is, of lands and their running, that so much of Shireen's education is given over to matters which Selyse feels are the province of men, of lords.

 

 

   Shireen does not understand it, for she is of a mind with her father, that Shireen as heir must be taught at least how to understand how to manage these lands, and not simply a keep and castle, that it is well for her to know so that she will not have to rely overmuch on others once she is grown.

 

 

   She has heard her mother and father argue much over this, of late.

 

 

   Shireen does not mean to hear them, but she has. She knows that their disagreement has taken root in their shared fear that they will never see Shireen well wed - perhaps not wed at all. Shireen also knows that this will mean that to some extent she will have failed in her purpose as a Baratheon lady and her father's heir, and so now it is also her fear, but her parents' fear has taken two different directions and that is why they argue.

 

 

   Selyse believes that she has failed in her purpose also, by failing to provide a male heir, and she believes that Shireen is too unappealing to ever make an appropriate match. She objects to Shireen's lessons because she believes that a lady of Shireen's standing should be preparing to make a good wife to a lord, and be taught accordingly.

 

 

   Shireen's father insists that it is only practical to teach Shireen of alliances and lands and their running and other such matters, so that if she is one day wed, whether she be heir to Dragonstone or has had a brother in the meantime who will take over that duty leaving Shireen to be merely some lord's lady instead, she will know her own business well enough to meet whatever needs she finds she has in that direction.

 

 

   It is due to this disagreement that Shireen has found that new lessons have been added to her days of late. Selyse has decided that if Shireen is to continue to take her lessons with maester Cressen, she must also take lessons the purpose of which is to attempt to mould Shireen into a finer lady than she is, in hopes that the more extensive her accomplishments, the more attractive she will be to a future match.

 

 

   This is why Shireen's hands ache - her fingers haven't the skill with needle and thread that they have with pen and ink, and so she stabs herself more often than she manages an even stitch, and although Shireen has shown promise at the harp, her mother is no patient teacher for either, and it seems to irritate her that Shireen's hands take more easily to coaxing melodies from strings than Selyse's own, making her intolerant of the slightest error even though Shireen has not been playing long.

 

 

   Shireen's father has made no objection to Selyse adding lessons in sewing, singing, harping, and other such ladylike pursuits to Shireen's day, and Shireen has not complained, but she does wish that Selyse had not insisted that her lessons take precedent over maester Cressen's and that they be matched evenly in the time Shireen spends on them, for it means now that Shireen goes first to her mother and spends only the latter part of her day with maester Cressen, and so she goes to take up her pen with sore and swollen fingers and look upon the painted table with gritty eyes.

 

 

   Shireen might think to ask if perhaps they could not return to the old order and allow her to take her lessons with maester Cressen first, if it were not for how she has heard the frustration bordering on tears in her mother's voice when she told Shireen's father that their daughter is too ugly and too little of what a man seeks in a woman to ever fulfil her first duty to their House.

 

 

   Her mother is already so sick at heart that Shireen is not the boy child she so desperately wants, Shireen will do all she can to be the best daughter she can to her, to earn her love and try to allay her mother's fears that Shireen will turn out to be a failure in truth.

 

 

   It is why Shireen rises and washes her face thoroughly, readies herself for the morn, and goes to her mother dutifully.

 

 

   It is why Shireen does not ask for reprieve when Selyse demands she spend her first hour at the harp, plucking out the same melody repeatedly until she can do so without her mother correcting her fingers.

 

 

   Once Selyse is satisfied with her work, Shireen is sent for a bowl of porridge, her mother's waspish comment that at least she does not run much to fat ringing in her ears when she goes, but she reminds herself again and again that her mother is afraid, that she speaks not out of hate but out of fear, that her thought is for Shireen's future, that she is arming Shireen for what will be required of her once she is full-grown.

 

 

   Maester Cressen comes to her as she eats and bids her a good day, asks how her harping goes, and Shireen tries to smile but she is so tired today that she doesn't think it looks well on her face.

 

 

   “Child, had you a rough night?” maester Cressen asks her with kind concern, and Shireen nods into her bowl.

 

 

   “I had bad dreams. About dragons,” she tells him quietly, for she is surely too old now to have such dreams and be so afraid of them, and she is ashamed,

 

 

   “I dream of them most nights. I dream that everything burns - sometimes I dream that the dragons eat me.”

 

 

   When she looks up, maester Cressen looks distressed, thoughtful, his hands tucked into his sleeves as he watches her gravely, and he is solemn when he replies,

 

 

   “Those are bad dreams indeed, my lady. Would you like me to blend you a sleeping draught to help ease your nights? We needn't tell your mother, if that is what worries you. You know it is my duty to see to the health of the household.”

 

 

   Shireen lingers over her spoonful but at length she must say,

 

 

   “No thank you, maester. I can manage. I think I'm only tired.”

 

 

   “If you're quite sure,” maester Cressen murmurs slowly, still looking worried,

 

 

   “But if ever you change your mind, I have remedies for disturbed sleep. I do not like to see you so unwell, child. It does my old heart no good.”

 

 

   “I am well, maester Cressen,” she assures him,

 

 

   “Just tired. It's the new lessons. I'm not a very good lady, mother says, so I must work harder, and I wish I were as good with these things as I am with books and letters...”

 

 

   “Your talents for reading and writing are prodigious, my lady,” maester Cressen compliments her, and she feels herself redden in all but the dead part of her face,

 

 

   “There will be time enough for you to learn all the crafts which become a lady. I will speak to your father, recommend that you be given more time to rest. None of us wish to see you fall ill again.”

 

 

   “But you said - ” she cries, dropping her spoon into her bowl as her fingers numb, and she feels tears spring to her eyes at once, even as maester Cressen holds up his hands to her and speaks in quick but reassuring tones,

 

 

   “Not the greyscale, child, not that - we are certain you can never contract it again, quite certain, have no fear of that, put it from your mind, I spoke without thinking! I only meant that no one wishes to see you become ill for _any_ reason again, least of all preventable exhaustion!”

 

 

   “Oh...” she manages, feeling her throat scrape and constrict, her fear ebbing away into shame at her reaction, for she has been told and told that the greyscale can never return, that she is cured forever and immune to any fresh hold the illness might seek to take on her, but still it is what frightens her most in this world, so she looks into her bowl and at the arc of porridge splattered across the table where her spoon fell, and blinks away the desire to cry.

 

 

   “It's alright to be afraid, Shireen,” maester Cressen says very gently, and Shireen nods but finds she has no answer.

 

 

   She doesn't want the rest of her breakfast. She doesn't want to go back to her mother and be given another sewing lesson.

 

 

   She wants to go and hide in her room and read her book of runes again, and pray for a reply to the letter that she sent where she let someone see who she is and one of the things she fears - that knowing her is not worth the effort it takes.

 

 

   She would have just rewritten the letter but she didn't want to waste paper and it took her such a long time to write out the runes because she was too impatient to wait until she felt completely sure in the writing of them to reply to Rickon Stark, in case the already lengthy wait would mean he had forgotten all about her or just didn't care for her reply when it came, so she ended up sending away imperfectly scribed runes, and a passage that was struck out but which could likely be read with a little determination, and it encapsulated all her concern.

 

 

   Rickon Stark is under no obligation to care - there will be no consequence to him if he grows bored with waiting for Shireen to write to him in reply, and she knew that just as she knew that the wait would be long what with her not being able to even parse the original message he sent her, so when she wrote back to him, she couldn't help her concern that the wait would have been too long from spilling onto the page.

 

 

   Her mother has been telling her, men are easily bored, men are inconstant, impatient creatures, and Shireen has prayed that her mother is wrong, because she does not want to believe it.

 

 

   Her father is not a man who becomes bored, she knows - he does not believe in boredom, he believes in keeping the body and the mind occupied and active. Nor does she think her father is inconstant, when he is so intent on the importance of duty. She has seen impatience in him, but no more than she sees in herself at times, and so for all this, she thinks there is evidence that not all men are as her mother has said.

 

 

   Shireen has prayed that Rickon Stark, though of course not a fully grown man, is not such a creature as her mother has described.

 

 

   Shireen has prayed that he would understand, that he would know that she would need time to learn to read what he wrote to her, and to learn how to reply in kind, and that he would not hold the long wait for her reply against her, but it has been some time now and she has had no letter back.

 

 

   She is afraid that he grew bored of waiting. She is afraid that he received her reply at last and didn't care to write back, having tired of her already, deciding that she isn't worth the knowing because she took so long to learn runes and she is southern and she admitted to her fears that he would not wish to continue writing to her when she wrote that last letter, and although she struck it out it remained and she has been ashamed of it.

 

 

   Shireen is afraid that what she had allowed herself to hope might be her first true friend is a lost cause before it has truly become what she hoped, and although she has been heartening herself with maester Cressen's words - that Rickon Stark chose to write to Shireen of his own accord and offer his support of her - she grows disheartened with every day that passes now with no word in return, for she knows from her lessons how quick a raven may travel, and knows it has not been unreasonable to hope for a reply by now.

 

 

   Maester Cressen reaches to pat Shireen's hand, a comforting gesture he sometimes uses, clearly seeing her silence for the sadness it is, but he stops before doing so and instead takes her hand and lifts it carefully to inspect, and when she glances up at him she sees his frown.

 

 

   “This is from the new lessons?” he asks, very gently unfurling one of her torn fingers, his frown growing deeper, and Shireen nods.

 

 

   “I keep pricking myself on the needle,” she explains,

 

 

   “And mother says I need to harden my hands to the harp strings.”

 

 

   “Strengthen them, perhaps,” maester Cressen murmurs, sounding greatly disquieted,

 

 

   “But there is no need for this. If this continues, there could be lasting damage. No, this won't do - I will speak to your father, Shireen. Finish your breakfast. I will find you later, those hands need tending.”

 

 

   “Yes, maester,” she replies, but he is already up and walking away with purpose, a strength to his stride that she does not recall ever seeing, for maester Cressen is the oldest person she knows or has ever seen and she knows that his back and legs pain him greatly on most days and that his old bones are tired.

 

 

   She finishes her porridge although she doesn't feel hungry anymore, and then she cleans up what she spilt and leaves the bowl and spoon to be taken away by a servant, going to her mother's rooms as she's been instructed to when it is time for sewing, but on the way there, she hears her father's voice raised in anger, and she stops in the hall and listens.

 

 

   Her father rarely shouts, he is a man of vast self-control, and he does not consider it seemly to shout, has always told Shireen that it is not necessary to raise one's voice, but he is doing so now, and he sounds furious.

 

 

   “ - just a child!” Shireen can hear him rage, and then her mother's voice, not quite loud enough to be heard clearly, and Shireen's father again, insisting,

 

 

   “Barely five! And her age does not matter - if I'll not let you strike her, I'll not let you make her wear her fingers to the bone in some mindless attempt to teach her skills she may never even use!”

 

 

   Shireen drifts closer to the source of the disturbance, her slippered feet silent on the stone floor of the hall outside her father's rooms, and she can hear her mother now, piercing and shrewish.

 

 

   “ - she is ugly, Stannis! I have given you an ugly daughter - what can I do but try and improve her in hopes she might one day be able to attract a lord who will take her and Dragonstone and like her enough to do well by both?”

 

 

   “I would rather a lady who understands our lands and who our allies are and why than a lady who sings prettily enough that I needn't engage a musician if I've a need for entertainment,” Shireen's father snaps,

 

 

   “And so would any man of quality and honour, and I'll give our daughter to no less a man if it ever comes to that! A wife is not an ornament, Selyse, nor is our daughter - Cressen says she is intelligent, let that be the strength she relies on when what looks she may grow into fade and her fingers can't pluck a string or thread a needle! Let that be enough!”

 

 

   “It will _not_ be enough, why won't you see that?” Selyse shrills, sounding near hysteria,

 

 

   “You will insist on looking on her with a father's eyes - well I look with a mother's and I see where she is deficient, and I am trying to make it less, I am trying to make right my failure!”

 

 

   “You will not call my daughter a failure,” Shireen hears, as she hears the warning in her father's voice, and she shrinks against the wall, afraid they might somehow know she hears all this,

 

 

   “Nor will you call yourself a mother while Cressen tells us that your actions may have injured our child permanently!”

 

 

   “Only if not tended to now,” Selyse defends herself,

 

 

   “And she never complained, how was I to know?”

 

 

   “She does not complain because you show her nothing but disappointment and she does not want you to show her worse for being weak!”

 

 

   “But she _is_ weak - she is sickly and ugly, and it is my _fault_ \- ” Shireen can hear her mother's voice break on a sob, and she can't listen anymore, and so she runs, and though she has no plan but escape, she finds herself in the rookery, among the birds with their clever eyes and the rustling of their shining feathers, and she thinks not for the first time that they are beautiful, and that her hair is not unlike the hue of them, and how much simpler things would be if she were only a raven, what sights she could see, how none would pay her any special heed among the other ravens.

 

 

   Maester Cressen has shown them to her and shown her how to behave with them, so Shireen knows to be calm, but her soul is disturbed with what she has heard and her hands ache, and she wants the comfort of a being that will not speak or look at her as if she is any different to any other person, and so she coos to the birds and goes to admire them, telling them that they are lovely and clever, for they are, and letting them grow accustomed to her presence.

 

 

   She knows that ravens kept for the purpose of sending messages must be also kept used to the touch of people, and so she brushes her stiff and weary fingers against their plush breasts and strokes their wings with care and respect, and listens to their voices.

 

 

   They seem to like it when she sings to them, as she has done before, so she does so again, one of the tunes she is learning to play upon the harp, and one or two of them join her, sounding almost as though they are trying to mimic her, and it soothes her heart and excites her, for she knows some ravens can be taught to speak, and she gives herself over to the distraction of thinking how marvellous it would be if she could meet such a bird that could speak to her like a person.

 

 

   She is distracted enough that she doesn't notice the newly-arrived raven until it caws behind her where it is proffering its leg, and though it is maester Cressen's duty to receive new messages, Shireen does not wish to leave the bird so encumbered when it has served so well and travelled far to do so, and so she hastens to remove the message, cooing softly to the raven.

 

 

   “Thank you, ser Raven, I'm sorry my fingers are so stiff - I don't mean to hurt you, forgive me,” she apologises to it as she releases it, but the bird regards her with clever eyes and makes a sound in its throat and then goes from sill to perch and leaves her to see who the message is for.

 

 

   The sharp scratch of runes catch her eye and then her breath, and her fingers shake as she tries to open the seal without damaging the paper.

 

 

_I hated waiting but it's fine because now it can just be us and I'll write to you until we meet and we can talk instead - I know we will like I knew you would live. Sometimes I just know things, but sometimes I dream about them instead. I didn't dream you though. I just knew. What do you dream of? Sometimes I dream that I'm Shaggydog my direwolf but they only live in the north so you won't know what one looks like. There's one on our banner but it doesn't look like Shaggy, he is much bigger and much better. When you come you can see. He likes you already - we know what you smell like because it sticks to the paper. Do you go in the sea? Osha showed me the sea so I know what it is. She's a wildling. She knows about you and she knows runes but she won't tell anyone and I hide the letters so no one knows. Sansa my sister tried to steal one so I have to and now you're just mine. I can show you when you come. I know you will. I hope it's soon so we don't have to wait and I can show you Shaggy and everything and you can show me what you're learning!_

 

 

   For the third time today, Shireen's eyes are full of tears, but she holds her letter close and takes care to keep it smooth and dry.

 

 

   He didn't even write her name - or his own - because this is just them. That must mean they're friends, it must! She has a friend, a friend who wants to see her, who wants to talk to her, who wants to know what she dreams of and what she's learning...

 

 

   She dashes her sleeve across her face quickly, not minding when it catches on her scars, and goes to the table to start writing her reply, because unless she has no choice she won't make him wait, she hated waiting too and she wants to write back immediately, because even if he knows they will meet - and she believes him - he doesn't know when, just hopes it'll be soon, and so does she, but until then, she'll write, so that maybe when they do meet, he'll know and like her enough not to care about her deficiencies.

 

 

   _Rickon_ \- she writes, because even if he didn't bother with their names, she wants to, and these are the first things she learnt to write in runes so it reminds her which are which -

 

 

   _I dream of dragons..._

 

 

   -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  [Inspirational Imagery](http://valkyrien.tumblr.com/post/144870613394)


	7. Chapter 7

 

 

 

   Rickon has taken - much to the dismay of the stuffy old maester who seems to think he owns the place - to haunting the rookery, convinced that it would be better if he can entirely dispense with the interference of others and manage this business of receiving and sending ravens by himself.

 

 

   An unforeseen obstacle, though, has reared its head, in that it has been clear from the start that the birds do not like Rickon at all, and are even less accepting of Shaggydog, which has led Rickon to the conclusion that it's likely they can smell direwolf on him and that is what they object to so strongly. Since there's no help for that and Rickon feels that they are stupid for being alarmed by it at all when they live at Winterfell and should know by now that direwolves are not interested in eating them, he has elected to ignore their distress at his presence.

 

 

   He is aware that the maester, that fussy old bugger, has complained to Rickon's parents of his new habit of visiting the rookery at odd hours and supposedly assaulting the ravens by catching them to wrest messages from them when he sees any that bear one, as this apparently distresses the birds.

 

 

   Unfortunately for the birds and the maester both, Rickon does not care and has refused to be discouraged in his decision to further guard the secret of his letters to Shireen by intercepting all ravens personally to examine the messages they bear in case they are for him, and has further decided that the only way to bend the wretched creatures to his will is to lay siege to them until they learn to accept the scent of direwolf and the critical gaze of a Stark who feels personally disappointed by their daily failure to deliver him of a missive from Shireen Baratheon.

 

 

   He tells them this often, as he glares at them where they sit on their perches and ruffle their feathers and shriek at him, the occasional bird darting at him in an attempt to peck him, but Rickon is not afraid of birds and he considers these particular birds ineffectual vassals of his family, and thus feels entirely justified in scolding them regularly.

 

 

   Tonight he is here because he knows everyone else will be at dinner, which is a ridiculous waste of time when everyone knows the way to the kitchen and could just as well do as Rickon does and go down there at will to sample the things in the great pots or fill their pockets with things to eat as they see to other matters, but on reflection he feels that dinner serves at least the purpose of ensuring that almost everyone is out of the way while Rickon sees to the most important task of the day, namely denouncing every bird in the rookery for their continued inadequacy.

 

 

   “Stupid birds!” he rails at them,

 

 

   “All you do is sit there and eat like everyone else - none of you bothered to bring me anything today either!”

 

 

   The birds clearly do not appreciate the tone he is taking with them, but Rickon is used to that in people as well as in birds and brushes it off easily, pointing at them and warning,

 

 

   “If all you can do is sit there and get fat, I'll put you in a big pie, see how you like that!”

 

 

   So intent is he on delivering his threat that he does not notice the raven that flies in the window until it has launched itself at his head, getting tangled in his curls before it can peck him too badly, but he immediately subdues it, careful of the wings but otherwise ruthless as it scratches and stabs at his hands with beak and claws, but large as these birds are it is no match for Rickon, particularly not when he glimpses the seal on the message attached to its leg, and he tears the message off impatiently, struggling bird tucked securely under his arm, and inspects the seal more closely, verifying that it is as he hoped, and then he howls with victorious joy and clasps the confused and somewhat ruffled raven in a decidedly awkward backwards hug before releasing it so that it can hop away at speed.

 

 

   “It's from her - look, all of you, look! It's from her, this is what the right ones look like,” he laughs, waving it at them as they squawk and regard him warily, and then he turns to the bird who brought it and promises,

 

 

   “I'll bring you something from the kitchen when I've read this, raven, thank you, you got it right!”

 

 

   The bird does not look as happy about this as perhaps it could, but Rickon puts that from his mind and sets to breaking the seal and unfolding the paper, already moving to leave the rookery, but he stops with one hand on the door and from the other side he can hear Shaggy whine.

 

 

   There is blood on the letter, inside the letter - smeared and faded and old - and Rickon tugs open the door without thinking and is almost bowled over by Shaggydog, who growls and barks at the birds, making them scream, and then whines and licks at Rickon's hands, herding him from the rookery by pushing at him with his great bulk, and Rickon stumbles forwards a few steps, eyes flitting over the runes until he realises what Shaggy's doing and mutters,

 

 

   “No - get off, Shaggy, stop it - ”

 

 

   Shaggy doesn't stop, though, whining more loudly, and he won't leave Rickon's hands or the letter alone, making it impossible to read anything, and Rickon is about to shout when he is beaten to it by the maester who squalls,

 

 

   “ ** _What on earth are you doing to those birds!_** ” and Shaggydog rounds on the man at once, snarling and snapping at him, and Rickon does the same, then buries his hand in Shaggy's fur and pulls and runs away with him, away from the rookery and the old man wailing about his precious ravens, away to hide in the dust of the library where he spreads his letter out on the floor to read properly, having to nudge Shaggy away as he noses at the paper and whines piteously, trying to lick at it.

 

 

   _Rickon_ \- Shireen writes,

 

 

   _I dream of dragons most nights now. Dragonstone is full of statues and carvings of dragons, so even though there are none left anymore I know what they look like. I dream that they come to burn everything and eat me, and it scares me. I think I dream it because I am very tired since starting my new lessons with my mother. She is teaching me to sew and play the harp and sing, and other things she says a lady should know, because she doesn't think I am a very good lady yet and it makes her worry for me. The new lessons are not as good as learning all about the North, and they hurt my hands because I have to practise all the time to get better, so I apologise for my untidy runes! I would love to see the North and meet a real direwolf - do you really think yours will like me when we meet? I hope so. I've never had a pet, but maester Cressen has taught me about the ravens so now I can send letters to you myself and it really is a proper secret, just us two know! I do like the ravens but I'm sure talking to them is nowhere near as good as playing with a real direwolf. I do go in the sea sometimes because Dragonstone is an island, but I've never met a wildling. When we meet, I'll tell you all about the sea and sing you the songs I'm learning about it, and you can introduce me to direwolves and wildlings! I wish I were a raven so I could fly to Winterfell right now! Tell me what else you do in the North, please? - Shireen_

Rickon reads it again, having to push Shaggy off where he tries to put his whole head on top of the paper, making unhappy little huffing sounds, and then he kneels up and holds it out to Shaggy on purpose, letting him sniff it, watching him taste the paper and let out a thin, muffled howl.

 

 

   “Blood,” Rickon agrees, the usual salt and snow tinged with iron on his tongue, and he folds the paper up very small and hides it in a pocket, and then jumps up and lets Shaggydog lead him away from the library, towards the sounds and smells of food and eating, of family, and Rickon doesn't want to go near dinner at all but it's where he's sure to find his parents, and it can't wait, so he follows Shaggydog into the hall and lets him forge a path for them through a wake of upset servers and irritated diners straight to Ned and Catelyn, who look surprised and bemused to see him at all, and Rickon insinuates himself between their seats and climbs on to his mother's chair to get their full attention, and declares,

 

 

   “We have to go south and save Shireen.”

 

 

   “What?” his father asks through a mouthful of meat, and Rickon tolerates his mother putting her arm around his waist to hold him in place and beginning to fuss over one of his hands which he waves to make her stop, and tells them more insistently,

 

 

   “We have to go south and rescue Shireen - they're hurting her!”

 

 

   “Who is Shireen?” Ned asks, swallowing and giving his wife a perplexed look over Rickon's shoulder, and Catelyn says distractedly,

 

 

   “Stannis' little girl,” and Rickon loses patience with both of them and bats his mother's hand away from his where she is still trying to grab it, raising his voice a little bit and telling them again,

 

 

   “They're _hurting_ her!” because it is clear they don't understand the gravity of the situation, but it only seems to confuse his father more.

 

 

   “Who's hurting Stannis' daughter? And how do you know about it?” Ned demands, and Rickon immediately thinks to last time his father was told about how Shireen and Rickon have been writing to each other, how he didn't approve of Sansa's attempt to steal Rickon's letter, and Rickon knows he promised Shireen that this was a secret now, but he also know his father won't believe him unless he has proof that it's true, and the only way to prove it is to be honest.

 

 

   “There was blood on the letter she sent me,” he tells them, squirming away from his mother who finally manages to hold him still enough to snatch his hand, and she holds it out between Rickon and Ned and says with dismay,

 

 

   “Look at this - Rickon, what happened to your hands?” and Rickon glances at them and rolls his eyes because it should be perfectly obvious, but his father is frowning, so he explains quickly,

 

 

   “I had to catch the bird to get the letter off it!”

 

 

   “Rickon, we've told you to leave the ravens alone, and so has maester - ” Ned begins, and Rickon tears his hand away from his mother who is inspecting it closely now and cooing over it like it's important, and he yells,

 

 

   “I had to get the letter, I didn't hurt the bird, I was going to feed it later - you're not _listening!_ There was blood in the letter, they're hurting Shireen!”

 

 

   “Catelyn, leave him,” his father instructs, reaching over to take Rickon himself from a reluctant Catelyn, and set him on the table in front of Ned to be sternly gazed at and interrogated in the serious voice that usually means Rickon will end up being forced to take a bath or go to bed properly very early,

 

 

   “You were in the rookery, even though you've been told not to go there?”

 

 

   “Yes,” Rickon confirms, remorseless and wanting this part over with so he can work on convincing his father that Shireen must be saved from her southern dragon-prison that frightens her.

 

 

   “And you were bothering the ravens even though you've been told not to?” Ned demands, and Rickon frowns.

 

 

   “Not bothering - watching them,” he corrects, and his father closes his eyes for a long moment and then looks even more serious when he opens them again.

 

 

   “But you got pecked trying to catch one of them - that is bothering them, Rickon, and we've told you not to,” he says very firmly, and Rickon frowns harder.

 

 

   “I had to catch it to take the letter off it,” he argues,

 

 

   “They can't do it themselves!”

 

 

   “No, but it is the maester's job to see to the ravens and the messages they bring, and we have told you this, just as we've told you to let the birds alone - you had no business in the rookery trying to catch them,” Ned insists, and before Rickon can protest he goes on very seriously to ward off Rickon's best argument,

 

 

   “ _Not even_ if you think they are carrying a message for you! You stay out of the rookery, do you hear me?”

 

 

   “Yes,” Rickon says with prompt irreverence, because he does hear it. Whether he will heed it is an entirely different matter and that's not what he was asked.

 

 

   His agreement seems to take some of the irritation out of his father's face though, and he settles into his chair less stiffly and nods, accepting Rickon's answer, and then asks with a wrinkled forehead,

 

 

   “Now, what's this about Stannis' girl?”

 

 

   “Shireen wrote. She says she's scared and her mother's making her do lessons that hurt, and there was blood in the letter,” Rickon explains, impatient and fidgeting, and his father strokes his beard and hums and then glances at Rickon's hands again and suggests in a tone that tells Rickon he feels he is being very sensible,

 

 

   “There's blood on your hands from being pecked at. Couldn't it be yours?”

 

 

   “ _No_ ,” Rickon snaps, kicking his feet out and very narrowly missing his father's chest,

 

 

   “Blood was only _inside_ the letter, it was _old_ , we tasted it!”

 

 

   “You - ” Ned begins, and then looks between Shaggydog and Rickon and sighs heavily, rubbing over his beard again like he's tired, and he shakes his head and finally says, infuriatingly gentle like Catelyn so often is when she's explaining things to Rickon because she thinks he's still a baby,

 

 

   “Rickon, we cannot go south and simply _take_ Lord Baratheon's daughter. Believe me, she is absolutely safe where she is - her father would move mountains for that girl, she is in no danger.”

 

 

   “Then why's she bleeding?” Rickon demands angrily, defying Ned to have a satisfactory answer to that,

 

 

   “Why are they hurting her?!”

 

 

   “Rickon,” his father starts, part warning, part exasperation, and Rickon can see that they don't understand, looking to his mother he can see that she doesn't either, that they won't help, and they've already decided, he can tell, so he glares at them both and shouts,

 

 

   “It's not right!”

 

 

   “Rickon!” Catelyn exclaims, reaching for him immediately as if she wants to gather him back to her or worse, into her lap, and he swats at her hands to discourage her, but she persists, her face sad and anxious as she tries,

 

 

   “Dear heart, please - it might be nothing at all, she could have pricked her finger on a needle, or the blood might already have been on the paper she used, there's no need to fear for her, her parents would never allow her to come to harm, I promise you - ”

 

 

   “You don't know! You don't know _anything!_ ” Rickon howls, snapping at her and ignoring his father's instant sharp command of,

 

 

   “Rickon, stop that!” but Rickon doesn't, kicking at his mother's hands instead and shuffling back on the table, upsetting trenchers and cups alike, and flinging one at Ned when he tries to grab Rickon's leg, buying him time to leap from the table and run, Shaggydog on his heels and keeping would-be pursuers at bay, and he has no clear goal in mind but when at length he collides with someone who catches him about the middle and doesn't let go, he fights hard for the brief moment it takes to realise that it is only Jon, and that his confused, concerned tone matches his face when he asks,

 

 

   “Rickon, what's wrong? Are you crying?”

 

 

   “ _No!_ ” Rickon denies wetly, punching Jon's shoulder hard when he doesn't let go at once, and Jon frowns and sets Rickon down, holding up his hands to show he won't grab him again, and behind him Ghost whines softly in response to Shaggydog going to Rickon's side and letting Rickon throw his arms around his great neck and bury his face in the fur there for a moment.

 

 

   “What's happened?” Jon asks quietly, sounding worried, and Rickon lifts his face from Shaggy's neck to glare blurrily at his brother.

 

 

   “They won't help,” he mutters with angry petulance, and Jon's frown grows even more confused.

 

 

   “With what?” Jon presses for detail, and Rickon's glare turns wary. He has already told his parents too much, and they disappointed his best hopes. He is not keen on the idea of trying again with another, spreading his secrets about when it'll be no use in the end, but Jon looks earnestly troubled by Rickon's upset, and he was the one who gave Osha the last letter for Rickon when it arrived, so he already knows a little, and it wouldn't be so very much more to tell...

 

 

   Rickon thinks if there is any chance that Jon can help, Shireen will forgive him for telling Jon as well.

 

 

   “With saving Shireen,” he replies at last, watching Jon closely for his reaction, and Jon looks surprised but still mostly concerned, asking a little hesitantly,

 

 

   “Your... friend? Who writes to you? Why does she need saving?”

 

 

   “Because look,” Rickon tells him, pulling the folded letter from his pocket and opening it back up quickly but carefully, holding it out to Jon so he can see where Rickon points,

 

 

   “That's blood, and it's inside the letter, so it's not from where the stupid raven pecked me and it's not from anything else, it's Shireen, because she says she's scared and she says her new lessons are hurting her hands and that's why she can't write like usual, and so we have to save her!”

 

 

   Jon frowns intently, studying the smear, but he doesn't try to touch the paper, and nor does Ghost, going only so far as to scent the air briefly, and when Rickon is sure Jon has seen enough, he whisks the letter away again back to its hiding place, because he doesn't think Jon can read runes but he isn't willing to risk the safety of the letter by keeping it out in the open for too long.

 

 

   “You see?” he demands, and Jon nods thoughtfully, and then asks,

 

 

   “Who did you show it to?”

 

 

   “Mother and father,” Rickon tells him with appropriate disdain,

 

 

   “All they did was fuss because I wasn't s'posed to be in the rookery, and they said we can't save Shireen because she's not really hurt, but I didn't show them because they weren't listening!”

 

 

   “I'm sure they did listen,” Jon mumbles loyally, but his expression is harried and pinched, and then he goes on a little more seriously,

 

 

   “What are the lessons? How are they hurting her?”

 

 

   “She says the new lessons are lady-lessons like sewing and singing and playing the harp and they hurt her hands so she can't write properly,” Rickon reveals, deciding that these are details it is alright to share with Jon, and Jon looks a little bit upset and shrugs helplessly and says,

 

 

   “Maybe she pricked her fingers? Or she isn't used to harp-strings yet? They can't be so different from bow-strings, you have to get your hands used to them - I'm sure her mother wouldn't let her get hurt trying to learn those things. Ladies are supposed to have soft hands, like Sansa, I'm sure lady Shireen's mother wouldn't let hers be damaged.”

 

 

   Rickon narrows his eyes at Jon suspiciously and growls,

 

 

   “That's what Mother said, but it's still not right!” and Jon nods and very softly, with great understanding replies,

 

 

   “I agree, she shouldn't be too hurt to write properly, that doesn't sound right,” and it just adds fuel to the fire of Rickon's frustrated outburst of,

 

 

   “Shireen doesn't even _like_ that stupid dragon place, it's giving her bad dreams that scare her, she should just come here, and then no one would make her do things that hurt!”

 

 

   “I think even if she lived here with us, she'd still have to take some lessons,” Jon says gently,

 

 

   “She'd still be a lady, and ladies need to learn all sorts of things, just like we learn all sorts of things.”

 

 

   “Sansa's a lady and she doesn't have lessons that hurt her hands!” Rickon argues, and Jon looks briefly conflicted, like he's not sure how to respond, and then he very diplomatically agrees,

 

 

   “No, that's true, but it's only a little bit of blood - maybe lady Shireen's lessons weren't meant to either and it was an accident.”

 

 

   “No,” Rickon is sure, because Shireen would say so, she'd say if it was accidents, and she didn't, she said the lessons are hurting her so she can hardly write,

 

 

   “They're hurting her. They're letting her be hurt.”

 

 

   Jon's entire body slumps into unhappiness at that, but Rickon doesn't care, because he needs to make him understand that,

 

 

   “We have to save her. It's a bad place. She should be here.”

 

 

   “Rickon, I know you want to see your friend, but I'm sure she's alright with her parents,” Jon says heavily, looking tired and upset, and he tacks a smile onto it but it just looks sad, and Rickon does want to see Shireen but what's important is that she is not safe, so he interrupts harshly,

 

 

   “I don't want her to be _hurt!_ ”

 

 

   “No, of course not,” Jon says at once,

 

 

   “But maybe it isn't as bad as all that - ”

 

 

   “It is,” Rickon insists loudly, deciding on the spot,

 

 

   “If no one will help save her, I'll go and steal her myself - Osha says wildlings do it all the time, and it won't even really be stealing, Shireen doesn't want to be there!”

 

 

   “You can't just go south and steal a lady from her parents!” Jon states with shocked firmness, and when Rickon makes to argue he adds a little less sternly,

 

 

   “Maybe instead you could ask if she can visit? Ask your father to ask her father?”

 

 

   “He won't,” Rickon spits viciously, still stung at the betrayal of his parents not listening to him, not taking him seriously, not believing him that Shireen needs help,

 

 

   “They don't care. They care about _birds_ more. They don't understand!”

 

 

   “Well... Maybe they would if lady Shireen wrote herself and asked to come here? You could write to her and ask if she is really being hurt on purpose and if she'd like to come and visit us, and if she replies and says yes, you can show that to your parents, and they would have to consider it seriously,” Jon thinks out, and Rickon frowns intently, scratching the scruff of Shaggydog's neck and thinking hard himself.

 

 

   Shireen wrote that she can send ravens herself now without a maester - and he spares a moment to think how clever she is for making sure of that like Rickon has been trying to so they can keep their letters truly secret - so her mother and father wouldn't have to know if Rickon asks her if she really needs saving and she responds that she does, not that he's in any doubt as to that part but there may be something to having proof of it that he can show his own parents so they can't deny it or make excuses for Shireen's, and if all else fails, whatever Jon says, Rickon _could_ steal her, it can't be that hard, not if wildlings do it so often...

 

 

   “I'll ask her,” Rickon settles on, and Jon looks deeply relieved and smiles properly, encouraging,

 

 

   “That's the sensible thing to do. Ask her if she's really alright, and suggest that she visit us soon, arrange it with your fathers - I'd like to meet her. I'm sure everyone else would as well.”

 

 

   “Maybe...” Rickon murmurs, thinking of his mother's insistence that it's sad for ladies to have scars, and Sansa's fear of the greyscale Shireen defeated, and of how his parents seemed more concerned that he'd upset and been pecked by a silly bird than Shireen being hurt and alone with no brothers or sisters to protect her.

 

 

   “I'm sure she's alright, Rickon,” Jon says warmly, kindly,

 

 

   “Don't worry. Go and write to her now, you'll feel better.”

 

 

   “I will,” Rickon tells him, and Jon smiles more brightly, so Rickon also tells him very seriously,

 

 

   “Thank you,” and Jon tousles Rickon's curls like he would tousle Ghost's fur, and grins down at him, and says,

 

 

   “You're welcome. I'm sure it'll all be alright.”

 

 

   Rickon is less sure of this, so he shrugs, but before he leaves he says quite simply,

 

 

   “If it's not, me and Shaggy will just go south and steal her ourselves,” and he doesn't stay to watch the colour drain from Jon's face completely or to listen to his stammered protestation that it is not acceptable or possible or some other such silly-fool thing, because Rickon has to go and write to Shireen and make certain she's alright, and then make her the same vow if she isn't.

 

 

   It's the only right thing to do.

 

 

   -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reasons related to my health, in future until I am fully recovered, no further updates will be published unless the most recently posted chapters of my works receive three comments minimum, as it transpires that it apparently does not do the slowly healing 3rd degree burn on my dominant hand any favours that I get overly excited and write and publish upwards of 20,000 words of fic in under a week, so I am creating this rule in hopes it will give me incentive to make myself take breaks so I don't aggravate my injury.
> 
> I sincerely hope that you will all be understanding of my need to do this - I am terrible at self-care at the best of times and if I don't make a few rules for it I will neglect my healing process entirely.


	8. Chapter 8

 

 

 

   Shireen darts across the beach as fast as she can, the wet sand sucking at her boots and the slippery stones underfoot seeking to steal her legs from under her, the wind whipping her hair out both behind and in front of her and to all sides, the fineness of her long black elf-locks so that even the strictest braids won't hold it back against the caprices of nature, and both it and she are buffeted on all sides by the gales that tear at her clothes and drag tears from the corners of her eyes - remnants of the storms that have battered Dragonstone for weeks now stinging Shireen's cheeks, but the chill salt air doesn't sting her hands, for they've been long healed, and the wideness of her smile is felt just as much to her face as the spray from the waves leaping higher to crash against the rocks than usual.

 

 

   Shireen's laugh can only compete with the roar of the sea because it is higher and sweeter, a fine counterpoint to the percussion of her feet on slick black stones and the last of the storm wearing itself out over the island, but still her voice is swept away behind her, as thin and insubstantial as she feels between the gusts as she tries to turn her head to see if she is near to being caught, and her laugh is all the more delighted when she sees that she is.

 

 

   She has never been so happy as she has been these past moons - the burgeoning storms on the horison just allowing for her Onion Knight to bring her the most marvellous gifts she has ever received at her father's behest, and then closing over Dragonstone and making it so that she has been for the first time shut away in the halls of the only world she has yet known with two new faces that smile to see her as no others have ever done, for Davos Seaworth has brought Shireen his own son, Devan, as well as her cousin, Edric Storm.

 

 

   Really they are here to serve Shireen's father as his squires - Edric to be fostered for a time since he cannot remain with his mother for reasons whispered of but which Shireen does not entirely comprehend - but they are so near to Shireen in age and the storms that heralded their arrival have prevented everyone on Dragonstone from venturing much out of doors, including Stannis, much to his irritation, and so it seems to Shireen that it is as Davos has encouraged when first they came and that they are here more to be Shireen's playmates than anything else.

 

 

   Oh, they take lessons, of course, with her and maester Cressen, though she is far more advanced than they and so she often feels that she is tutoring them in partnership with her dear old Cressen, who has done nothing to disavow her of this notion and in fact spends much time praising her for her ability to see to not only her own further schooling but also to do her part to help the boys better themselves so they might one day hope to approach her level, but since they have been here Shireen knows she and they have spent far more time at play than at work of any sort.

 

 

   This is borne up by her mother's great irritation at the sight of any of them, though she practically holds her skirts aside for Edric in particular, claiming their idleness is offensive to her and that Shireen could do better for company than Devan and Edric both, but Shireen feels very little guilt at knowing that bar her usual studious application to maester Cressen's teachings, she has neglected almost everything else these past many weeks while they have all been largely confined indoors to simply grow to know her new friends better, and most of their time has been spent at games.

 

 

   Shireen never knew there were so many games in the world for children before Edric and Devan arrived, but she has determined to learn and play them all before her mother's stern and constant reminder that she will soon be far too old to flit about like a child and must begin to act the lady she was born instead catches up with her and all the time will have been wasted and lost.

 

 

   She and maester Cressen have spoken on it privately, not long after Edric and Devan arrived, when Selyse remarked more cuttingly than ever before that it was well that Shireen should so thoroughly and thoughtlessly neglect her studies to flounce about like a mindless tot with new toys, since she will soon be far too big to play at all without renouncing her dignity as a lady, and Shireen was prickled with shame and sought Cressen's guidance.

 

 

   “Mother thinks me irresponsible,” she had confessed to her old friend,

 

 

   “I don't mean to be - but they're only just arrived and I like them so much, maester Cressen, and I've always wished for someone to play with. Is it wrong? Do you suppose... Do you suppose father thinks me irresponsible for playing also?”

 

 

   “My dear child,” maester Cressen had said firmly, placing his hand comfortingly upon hers where it listlessly held a sheaf of paper she had no desire to use for any sensible purpose but had wanted so that Devan could fold her a boat with it as he had promised he was able and willing to,

 

 

   “It is my understanding that your lord father sent for your cousin and master Seaworth for the express purpose of taking them to squire for him, and to provide you with company of your own age at last. As long as your father does not object in your hearing, I believe you have no cause to fear that he objects privately to you playing with the boys as you have been doing. Far from it, in fact. You know your father to be a forthright man. Do you not think he would speak up if he was displeased with you?”

 

 

   Shireen could only agree that it was unlike her father not to speak up if indeed he was displeased and wanted affairs ordered differently than they had been, and this had allayed her guilt somewhat, but she had also asked maester Cressen tentatively whether perhaps her mother was right in telling her that she was shirking too many of her responsibilities in favour of haring off with Devan and Edric as she had been doing, and Cressen had only sighed and passed a gnarled old hand over Shireen's head with affection, weariness heavy upon him.

 

 

   “My lady... you have welcomed your guests with all grace and charity,” he had told her gravely,

 

 

   “Guests brought here at the will of your lord father, from whose own lips I have the order to see to it that you children take what lessons are sensible, and otherwise amuse yourselves so long as you are not underfoot while we are all confined by the storms. Once the weather abates, you can be sure the boys will be at tasks of their own much of the day, but until then, there is no shame in playing while there are no other calls upon your time.”

 

 

   “But Mother...” was its own problem, no further words need be spoken for Cressen to understand Shireen there, and he had sighed again.

 

 

   “Your lady mother knows all this as well as I do. The limitations the weather places on us all does not suit her, that is all. It restricts industry, and you know she prefers to see us all employed as best we may be, but I assure you, child, at this time, you are best employed at enjoying your youth while you may. The gods know, the time is brief enough and more precious for it...”

 

 

   They had spoken no more on it since, Shireen's concerns mostly soothed, and in truth she has been so dazzled by having at last the company of other children who do not shy from her, even if they do remember to treat her with the respect she is due, mostly, that she has allowed herself to think less of what her mother might be thinking of her than she ever has before.

 

 

   For the first time in Shireen's life, she is not alone - she has friends - and she will do as Cressen has advised and wring whatever joy she may from this time, because she is not so young that she doesn't understand how fleeting joy can be regardless from where it comes.

 

 

   Her feet falter on the stones she is navigating for a moment, and Devan's snatching hand almost grasps the cowl of her cloak before she can grab an outcropping of rock and duck behind it, hearing him laugh and skid sideways behind her as she changes course, throwing him off, and behind that even, she hears Edric's laughter, the two of them shouting her name, but there is a sting of grit now across her palm when the wind catches at it and pushes her fingers away from the graze left by the rock, and suddenly she is awash with a fresh guilt, one that has nothing to do with her mother and father, or whether she ought not be studying instead of playing a chasing game along the beach.

 

 

   They have been sent outside for the first breath of truly fresh air any of them have had in weeks. No one told them they might not play as well. She has no lessons to attend this morning, has done no wrong she can recall, and so the throb of guilt not unlike the hot flush and sting of tears from swollen eyes but lodged in her chest is unsettling to her, until she realises.

 

 

   Devan and Edric are not her first friends among children, or even her only such.

 

 

   She _has_ done wrong, to think that when it is so untrue, and the brimming shame of it halts her in her tracks and leaves her standing there with the tide soaking her boots and skirt - she starts when Devan's arms close about her and he crows triumphantly that she is caught, but his triumph is short-lived when he sees her face, for her tears are not for the wind, now.

 

 

   She is crying because for a moment, she forgot to count Rickon foremost in the tally of her friends, and she is deeply ashamed and guilt-stricken for it - worse, when she realises that for days now, she has not thought of him at all.

 

 

   The storms have prevented anything reaching or going from Dragonstone, including ravens, and she was resigned to it at the outset of them, the knowledge that if Rickon has replied to her last missive the weather might withhold it from her for far longer than would be bearable, but then Ser Davos had brought Devan and Edric just before the storms truly grew too dangerous to traverse the water for man or beast, and the delight she has been taking in their company has overshadowed everything, even the usually bitter-sweet anticipation of awaiting a reply from the very first other child to ever show her kindness.

 

 

   She recalls her misery when last she wrote to him, how she had sent the raven away with shaking fingers praying fervently that it would reach him swiftly and return with news of him for her to devour and lose herself in, so that she could drown her tedium and upsets in that tenuous security of being wanted which his letters have come to represent to her, and to think that she had all but forgotten that she was waiting for his reply is more than she can stand, so she simply stands where she stopped and weeps and weeps as Devan shouts for Edric, that something is the matter with Shireen that she will not explain - but how can she?

 

 

   Her cousin's arms join Devan's around her, two sets of hands flutter and dab and seek to clumsily reassure, and they address each other as much as she, demanding,

 

 

   “What happened, why does she cry, what did you do?” and,

 

 

   “Shireen, are you hurt, are you alright, what's the matter?” but she can only shake her head to them and weep the harder, overcome with horror that she has been so thoughtless, so ungrateful -

 

 

   It goes over her head that the boys are arguing who should go for aid, which of them is faster, both because they are taller than her but also because she is too deep in disappointment with her own disloyalty, but then she realises and oddly the thought that someone else should see her so dissolved and helpless causes her panic alongside all else, and makes the weeping worse, until she can hardly breathe and she is frightened, too, because she does not cry like this, she does not go into hysterics or throw fits, she is not a squalling infant and has not been for years, she is her father's daughter and she does not despair like this, no one else must see -

 

 

   What if _Mother_ should see her behaving like this? In public where anyone might -

 

 

   But it is worse, it is far worse, because it is her father's voice that cuts through the gale and the distress of the boys and Shireen's own overwhelming unhappiness, stern and authoritative, and demanding,

 

 

   “What happens here?” and at once the boys spring to their own defence, though at least Devan keeps his arm about her shoulders, although that means he jerks her along with him somewhat when he bows hastily and frets,

 

 

   “My lord - Shireen - she won't say what's wrong - ” and Edric adds,

 

 

“We did nothing, I swear!” but they are easily brushed aside by Stannis, who seizes Shireen by the shoulders and looks her over with a keen eye, a soldier's eye, she thinks, looking for some injury or hurt to explain how stricken she must seem, and the guilt only aches the more because she knows she is already a disappointment to her parents, that they so desperately wish for a strong boy in place of Shireen herself, and she must seem so weak, so pathetic -

 

 

   “Daughter, what ails you?” Stannis demands of her gruffly, and she can barely see how displeased he must be with her through the haze and sting of her tears, but her throat is closed and she has no good answer to give even if it weren't, so she only hangs her head and lets her hair fall in front of her face and cling to her hot, sticky cheeks, ashamed now not only for her weakness and inability to even answer her father when he addresses her directly - which is rare enough as it is, something to be savoured and cherished when it occurs, not met like this - but for how much uglier she must be when she cries so, and she trembles under his hands and waits to be berated, perhaps shaken a little, as her mother sometimes does when truly frustrated with her, for Stannis has decreed Shireen must not be beaten...

 

 

   Perhaps he will do it himself, she thinks, shuddering and trying to swallow past the misery stuck in her throat without snivelling or inhaling her own snot, and it is so terrible a thought that she sways, overcome, but only briefly, because then her father has taken his hands from her shoulders and swept her into his arms, limp as a doll but gently, competently held, and she hears him order the boys to send maester Cressen to his rooms because Shireen is unwell, and the sound of their running away, but her father does not run.

 

 

   He carries her, sedately and silently, but with brisk enough steps, back along the beach and up to the keep and inside, and with never a word, and then up to his private chambers, where he sets her carefully on a pallet she knows he sometimes sleeps on after working very late into the night from this room. His study, where she is not to go even though it is where many of the more fascinating of the books Cressen has been using for their lessons on trade routes and such live their daily lives.

 

 

   A cup is placed in her hands and she drinks obediently without being asked, all her energy spent, and then it is removed, and her father's large, rough hands push her hair from her face and his voice bids her,

 

 

   “Look at me, Shireen.”

 

 

   Shireen cannot recall ever seeing her father kneel. He is an upright man, proud and tall and not given to lounging, and he is not lounging now, but he is knelt before her on flagstones she knows must be a pain to his knees if even her father feels such things, but what is most important is that he does not look at her in disappointment.

 

 

   Instead, behind the frown he has always worn, all her life that she remembers, to varying degrees, there is concern - fear, she might think, if she weren't so sure Stannis Baratheon knows no such feeling - and confusion.

 

 

   “Can you tell me why you are crying?” he asks of her, calm and controlled, and it prompts a fresh wave of tears, because she cannot, she doesn't know how, and she wishes she did so she might explain herself, might not seem so weak and contemptible, but her father does not scold her, or even raise his voice.

 

 

   “Are you hurt?” he asks instead, and when she hesitates, he assures her,

 

 

   “You may nod, or shake your head.”

 

 

   She shakes her head, and then remembers her hand, and holds it out a little, showing him the grit-encrusted graze there from the rock she grabbed, and she can only just manage a thick whisper of,

 

 

   “Just here,” and he looks at it like he might look at a document of moderate importance, and then back to her face.

 

 

   “That is not why you were crying,” he seems to know, but she does not need to ask how, because he says, with great purposeful certainty,

 

 

   “You are my daughter. You would not cry for trifling hurts if you never did with your hands more shredded than not from those damnable _lessons_ \- ” and she shrinks a little from the sudden vehemence in his voice and the language used, and he amends his tone at once so she knows he is not angry with her for any of that, and says instead,

 

 

   “If the boys were unkind to you, Shireen, you must tell me. You owe them no protection if they have slighted or harmed you in any way.”

 

 

   “Oh no - ” she gasps, dragging her breaths through the lump in her chest that will not dislodge itself to let her speak,

 

 

   “I promise, Father, they never did a thing wrong to me - we were only playing, and - ”

 

 

   But it is too difficult. She hasn't words for the despair of knowing she so casually wronged someone she cares for, someone who has been nothing but good to her though he never owed her anything at all in the world, and her father watches her patiently.

 

 

   “My daughter,” he says at length as she struggles to control herself,

 

 

   “Does not cry for trifling hurts. Nor is there anything she cannot tell her father. There is nothing I would not forgive you, Shireen, or try to understand, do you hear?”

 

 

   “But it's a secret,” Shireen says helplessly, more miserable than ever and sure she can never explain this in a way that will not surely anger her father in truth,

 

 

   “We promised - and I have already been so terrible - ”

 

 

   “Who is _we_?” Stannis demands, as stern as he was with the boys, and Shireen sobs and gives up.

 

 

   “Rickon and I,” she mumbles, letting tear follow tear over her ugly, smarting face, so certain of her father's disapproval that she cannot bear to look at him anymore.

 

 

   “And who is this _Rickon_?” Stannis asks her sharply, and she flinches and her voice is a garbled mess when she forces herself to tell him.

 

 

   “Rickon - Rickon Stark - he - we write letters - he was kind to me - ” is all she can get out, and her father sounds rather surprised when he repeats,

 

 

   “Rickon _Stark_?” but then more stern than surprised when he goes on,

 

 

   “This would be one of the Stark _children_ , I take it?” and Shireen nods and swallows very hard to try and agitate the lump, but it will sit there in her throat and throb despite her best efforts so that she sounds terrible when she confirms,

 

 

   “Maester Cressen says he is the youngest Stark child. Not so old as me yet,” and she hears her father sigh.

 

 

   “Shireen, look at me and listen to me carefully now,” he commands her, and she can only heed him though it hurts right through her, but still he does not look angry, only now a little wearier.

 

 

   “Shireen, has this Stark boy insulted you in some way?” he asks, and Shireen shakes her head, so he asks more gently than she knew he could,

 

 

   “Then why does my daughter cry for a child she has never met? What is this secret between you that causes you to be unhappy?”

 

 

   “The letters are the secret - I was afraid if you knew, you would be angry with me,” she confesses, and Stannis looks quite unruffled by this grand revealing of her most private doings.

 

 

   “Maester Cressen informs me that you are well able to manage your own correspondence, such as it may be, in a way which would do your House credit by any reckoning,” he tells her with severe calm,

 

 

   “I am assured that there is nothing you could be writing to another child which would do either you or our name any dishonour. Indeed, Cressen told me you had received a missive from the Starks on your recovery, and that he has overseen your reply. They are an honourable house and an excellent ally - if you have made a friend there of your own age, I commend your good sense and I support the decision.”

 

 

   “Oh, it wasn't me - ” Shireen says all in a rush,

 

 

   “I did nothing, I only replied - it was all Rickon, he was so kind to me, father, and he needn't have been, and now we are such friends, and I have been so disloyal - ” and again the tears come upon her so quickly she only just sees the complete confusion on her father's face.

 

 

   “Disloyal?” he enunciates crisply, with outright disbelief,

 

 

   “I do not believe a daughter of mine could be disloyal. I refuse to believe such an outrageous thing. It is not possible I should know you so little as that!”

 

 

   “But I am,” Shireen sobs, and she feels her heart is all but broken so she clutches at where she thinks it is, where it hurts the worst, right under the lump eating all the air she needs to live,

 

 

   “I am a terrible, _disloyal_ friend, Father - I _forgot_ , I forgot _completely_ for days and days that a letter should be coming - I was so happy to play with Devan and Edric that I forgot my _first_ friend - I _am_ as ungrateful as Mother says - ”

 

 

   “ _Enough!_ ” Stannis barks, and Shireen is so shocked at the interruption, harsh and loud as it is, that she starts with a fright so sudden she breathes too hard and the lump pops painfully, or feels it does, and she stares at her father's solemn, grave face with wide eyes, tears stymied in their coursing from sheer terror that she will now be shouted at as even her mother cannot shout, but there is no shouting, and the solemnity gives way to a tired, regretful expression echoed in Stannis' voice when he very softly tells her,

 

 

   “Enough, child. There is no disloyalty in you that I can find, nor was there ever a child _less_ ungrateful for what it has, is that understood, Shireen? You are never again to think such things of yourself, I tell you they are untrue, do you understand me?”

 

 

   “Yes, Father,” Shireen whispers, still shaken, and for a moment, it is her father who hangs his head as though he is ashamed, and then he places his one large hand over both of hers, and holds fast for a moment, gentle but strong, and Shireen thinks she sees, briefly, the shadow of a crown on his bent head, and then he looks up at her again with steely eyes and it is gone.

 

 

   “Forgive me; I should not have raised my voice to you, it was unnecessary,” he says with true remorse, and she nods so he will know she understands and he is forgiven because it is clear he has more to say, and he does, continuing,

 

 

   “Am I right to think that you and this Stark boy have been corresponding, and that you wrote last before Edric and Devan came here, and you are awaiting a reply likely delayed by the storms?”

 

 

   “Yes, Father,” she replies softly, hearing how ugly and rasping her voice is now and wishing it would stop.

 

 

   “And you have been glad to have the boys for your playmates while we have all been more or less confined? They are kind to you, and you have no reason to mind their company?” Stannis goes on, and Shireen nods.

 

 

   “Oh, yes, Father - I am so glad they came to be with us!” she assures him quickly, truly heartfelt, and Stannis pats her hand the once and then simply rests his own atop hers again.

 

 

   “And of course you understand that now we may all move freely in and out of doors once more, they will have less free time to spend at play with you,” he tells her, not a question, but she nods all the same and agrees,

 

 

   “I understand, Father,” and Stannis nods.

 

 

   “You are a sensible girl, Shireen. You do me credit, and I am proud to call you daughter,” he says with his usual firm, undeniable authority, every word law that Shireen would not dare question,

 

 

   “I promise you that it would be wholly natural for a child your age who has been entirely lacking in like-aged, goodly companionship to forget other commitments for a time when granted it, and I promise you further that the violence of your response to realising that you had indeed done so however briefly is a mark of quality and strength of character. Is this all clear to you?”

 

 

   “Yes, Father,” Shireen says quietly, somehow cowed by all this seeming praise,

 

 

   “Thank you.”

 

 

   “You need never thank me for telling you the truth,” he says shortly,

 

 

   “As your father that is my duty to you, among others, and it is your right to expect it of me. And I hope you have learnt, Shireen, that it is also my duty to keep whatever secrets you feel a need to share with me, and that you understand that I trust you to keep none that would harm either yourself or your House. Is this also clear?”

 

 

   “Yes, Father,” she replies as decidedly as she can manage to, and he nods curtly, and then clasps her hands for a long moment.

 

 

   “As to your concept of disloyalty, it is misunderstood and must be put right - attend me,” he tells her gravely, and she does her best to sit up straight and show that he has all her attention, and he clasps her hands more tightly, and carries on,

 

 

   “Those of us who are lucky to make true friends, friends to whom we are loyal in thought and deed, and who are loyal to us in turn, we need not feel that loyalty, or dedicate every action, every moment of the day to it, Shireen. The loyalty is there when it is required, to be called upon when required. It need not be in your every thought at all times, as long as you do not allow yourself to forget the bonds of it. Do you understand that?”

 

 

   “I... I think so,” she says with difficulty, and her father sighs and tries again, patient but serious.

 

 

   “Those who are your friends, Shireen, they are your friends always. When you need their aid, it is yours to call upon, as your aid is theirs. You may even think of them, often and fondly, but it is not disloyalty to them if you allow for other thoughts when necessary. Do you think of Rickon throughout every day without pause?” he asks her reasonably, and she shakes her head, so he asks further,

 

 

   “Did you do so before Edric and Devan arrived?” and again she considers and shakes her head.

 

 

   “More often, but not all the time. Not when I'm reading, or in lessons, mostly - I try not to because then I can't concentrate,” she admits, and her father smiles faintly.

 

 

   “And yet Rickon is ever your friend, and if his letter should arrive for you this instant, you would attend to it, would you not?” he asks, and Shireen nods, the very idea filling her with joy and hope as always it has, to hear from him.

 

 

   “Oh, yes - if you gave me leave, Father, I would go at once, always,” she replies, taking his hand in her enthusiasm and holding it to where her heart ached so hard before, and he allows it with another faint smile.

 

 

   “If there were no other pressing matters, I would allow it,” he tells her calmly,

 

 

   “Just as you will learn as you grow older how best to manage your time for the tasks which appear in a day for you to get on with, you will come to learn that there are times for opening and replying to letters, and times when other matters must take precedence unless the letter has to do with whatever important thing requires your first attention. So you see, Shireen, you have not been disloyal to your friend. You have done no wrong. You are only a child still, and one who is growing better than can be said for most, despite great adversity, clever enough to teach others already and truer than can be said for most who are full-grown.”

 

 

   “Thank you, Father,” Shireen gushes, kissing his hand and then hugging it close to her on a sudden whim, and he extricates himself carefully, but takes her chin between finger and thumb for a moment and looks at her sternly.

 

 

   “You are my daughter, Shireen. I owe you the truth,” he says severely, and Shireen smiles as brightly as she can though the tears still hanging on her lashes cause her discomfort and she aches with the unhappiness's of earlier.

 

 

   “I was not thanking you for the truth,” she explains honestly,

 

 

   “But for being my Father.”

 

 

   “As to that,” Stannis says, clearing his throat slightly and letting her go, leaning back from her,

 

 

   “There can be no doubt of it, but it is nothing to thank me for in itself.”

 

 

   “Then thank you for understanding,” Shireen amends, smiling a little more carefully now,

 

 

   “And for being the best Father.”

 

 

   It seems to catch him off guard, but not so much as the embrace she wraps around his neck, throwing herself forward at him and letting her arms express what she isn't sure she can tell him without making him cross or uncomfortable, and shortly she feels his arms about her in turn, holding her close for a moment before he detaches her gently, saying not a word of rebuke when she kisses his cheek as she withdraws.

 

 

   “Now,” he says with a far harsher clearing of his throat,

 

 

   “You must go and rest for the remainder of the day. I won't have you exhausting yourself again when you are only just healed of all that nonsense. You will find Cressen without, have him see to your hand and anything else you may need. A draught for your throat is in order, I think, and something for your face.”

 

 

   He rises, and Shireen watches him straighten with all the love burning in her heart much more fierce than the misery of before.

 

 

   “Yes, Father. Thank you,” she tells him, and he waves a hand at her, dismissing her towards the door and looking away, and she leaves quickly to find Cressen outside just as he said would be so, and allows the old maester to fuss over her and clean and bind her hand and then settle her in her bed with a warm draught to soothe her throat, liberally doused with honey, she tastes, and perhaps something to ease her into sleep, for before she realises it, she is slipping into slumber and Cressen is placing a cool cloth over her sore eyes and murmuring over her.

 

 

   Shireen does not dream of dragons.

 

 

   She dreams of snow, and her father at the head of a great host with a shining crown upon his brow and a shining sword in his hand, and before him a boy astride a huge black wolf, crownless but for a mass of ruddy hair kissed by snow and glowing so bright she cannot see his face, but the howls she hears come from elsewhere, and though Shireen feels she stands on a battlefield of ice somewhere between them, she feels also that she is viewing them from above as though she were a bird, and in the distant howling she hears her name, and flies away.

 

 

   -

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  [Chapter-relevant doodles.](http://valkyrien.tumblr.com/post/154043698019/my-daughter-does-not-cry-for-trifling-hurts)
> 
> [Chapter-relevant doodles in colour.](http://valkyrien.tumblr.com/post/154255971249/painted-with-old-makeup-on-a-whim-because-somehow)


	9. Chapter 9

 

 

 

   Since the disastrous outing on the beach on the first clear day after the storms, Shireen has not often been in the company of Devan and Edric - indeed the day after her descent into sudden and violent guilt and its consequences, Cressen deemed her too exhausted to leave her bed, and instead she spent all day confined once more, reading and dozing intermittently, with no visitors save Cressen himself who spent much of the time with her, as always particularly solicitous of her when she shows signs of lacking health or vitality.

 

 

   In the three days since, however, she has also been mostly with Cressen, though her father has requested she be present at the evening meal so that he may inquire into her studies, an uncharacteristic decision which Shireen at first disliked for a sign that even her father did not believe her strong enough to withstand her wearying upset without requiring his further attention to ensure she grows better, but has since cherished for the much-desired direct show of interest in her which she is so often denied by either his nature or his many responsibilities.

 

 

   She has learnt at these somewhat awkward dinners - for they are that, what with her mother's obvious sourness at Shireen's unusual presence and her father's obvious difficulty in not approaching all aspects of interaction with his daughter as a series of solemn tasks to be efficiently overcome - that the boys have been put to work in truth now there is no obstacle in the elements to it, explaining why she has rarely seen them, but she has also learnt that in part at least their sudden increase in duties is a form of punishment for mishandling the situation of Shireen's apparent injury.

 

 

   Had they not been disposed to bickering and trying to pass the decision of what best to do off each on the other, Stannis feels, they would have sought appropriate aid sooner, and as it stands their lack of maturity and oversight in cooperating more effectively reflects poorly on them and might, had Shireen truly been harmed somehow, have cost precious moments. In short this means that he has begun their training with a severity neither had expected, leaving them no leisure time whatever.

 

 

   It also explains why, when she has seen them however briefly, they have been so anxiously attentive to her, but she is glad to have another explanation than her fear that perhaps her outburst made them wary of her as a silly, sickly little chit who might at any moment break into bits for no apparent reason.

 

 

   Certainly no reason has been given to anyone, that she's aware of, for her fit on the beach, and for that she is profoundly grateful to her father for keeping her secret of Rickon's writings to her and the source of her guilt, and for guarding her honour in maintaining his silence on the subject to everyone, including her mother, though Selyse has remarked rather unkindly that it was foolish to allow so weak a child as Shireen to gallivant along a wet and windy beach so soon after storms-break, and Shireen knows that likely that is the opinion of everyone who has heard that lord Baratheon's daughter had to be carried indoors after becoming seemingly unwell.

 

 

   Still, she knows at least that her father does not think her weak - that in fact her reaction of the other day showed her to be loyal and true, qualities which Stannis admires in those who have them - and so she is not upset that he now knows all about Rickon.

 

 

   Rickon, she is sure, would understand why Shireen could not keep it from her father under those circumstances, and forgive her for telling.

 

 

   With all this fixed in her mind, Shireen determines to enjoy being allowed to sup with her parents for a change, and the chance to give her father whatever insights he feels are necessary into her education and progress, pride glowing within her to think that though Cressen must be providing him with full reports of same, Stannis thinks it a worthwhile investment of his valuable time to seek clarification from Shireen herself. If she were so very useless and dull, she persuades herself, her clever, impatient, busy father would not devote time to asking her such things of her studies as he does - he must find her capable of giving sensible, intelligent answers to want to involve her in decisions regarding her future, such as which subjects she would most like to study next and which of those she already devotes time to she feels she lacks aptitude for or does not understand the point of.

 

 

   Already, though it is clear it irks her mother excessively, Stannis has held forth on the topic of the importance of Shireen particularly attending to her study of the keeping of accounts, which she confessed she does not enjoy much at all, and made it very clear that this was added to Shireen's education deliberately by Stannis himself in a decision few fathers would think to make for their daughters.

 

 

   “Whatever the future may bring, I won't have you be cheated out of what's yours, or proved to be less than competent in administering your own wealth, which you shall have and therefore must learn to guard well from unscrupulous characters,” he declared firmly, marking the end of Selyse's rather thin protest that poring over accounts is not a duty befitting a fine lady.

 

 

   “The finer the lady,” he had said gravely, attention focused on Shireen entirely, as though her thin-lipped mother was not even present despite his words being a definite response to hers,

 

 

   “The greater the estate to be administered. To keep such an estate you will need to know what you have and how best to put it to work for you. That counts for gold as well as the labour of others. You will continue to study accounts.”

 

 

   Shireen is no more a fool than that she can recognise that this is a source of conflict between her parents because it harks back to their concern that she might never be married to a lord who can handle such affairs on her behalf, much less one who can be trusted to do so in honour and good faith, and so she asks no more what the use of learning about it is, and resolves to work harder at it, hoping that in time, even if she fails to be properly married, perhaps she may still prove a credit to her father and her house by managing her estate as soberly and responsibly as possible.

 

 

   Further, she knows that it is Cressen's most beloved saying, that all knowledge is knowledge worth the having, and that the price of it is often high, and so she is twice assured that whatever her mother may think, if Stannis has seen fit to make particular arrangements for Shireen's education, there must be a reasoning to it which is both canny and properly considered, and Shireen will not refuse the gift of learning when she knows well that many are not so fortunate as she to be given it in such abundance.

 

 

   That is why when on the third day of her presence at the evening meal with her mother and father, when Stannis asks if there is anything Shireen would like to begin learning or apply to him to have added to her curriculum, she is certain in her courage that it is a genuine question based in his faith in her having the sense to not ask for anything extravagant, ridiculous, or improper, and so she gathers herself, straightens her back, ignores her mother's surly expression, and makes her case.

 

 

   “I would like to learn all the languages spoken and written, so that I will be able to understand anything I see and hear,” she presents, as confidently and as seriously as she can, and her father regards her for a long moment, his gaze stony and shrewd.

 

 

   “That is a great undertaking, and it may not be realistic to become conversant, never mind fluent, in every language. What use do you see in learning all this?” he asks pointedly, and Shireen resists the urge to fidget.

 

 

   “Dragonstone is sealocked, so we are dependent on ships and trade, and Davos - Ser Seaworth - says that traders can come from anywhere, and sometimes they give you a better deal if you can speak their own tongue, and even if they won't, sometimes they talk about cheating you, and so it's good if you can understand them a little, in case they do,” she explains, hoping that her slip into over-familiarity which makes her mother's eyes so sharp and annoyed does not lessen the point she's trying to make, but then she can't help the passion which enters her voice as she hurries into her next argument,

 

 

   “And maester Cressen says that almost anything has a book written about it, so even if you can't find a teacher to tell you about something, you might be able to find a book, but lots of books by the best scholars on some topics are written in _their_ language, and Cressen says sometimes there's no translation, or they're not very accurate, but if you could read most languages, that wouldn't be a problem!”

 

 

   She realises she's become animated as her voice dies off, high and excited by the prospect of all that knowledge and all those stories out there, written in great tomes just waiting to be discovered and enjoyed and used for all sorts of things, and she shrinks back into her seat a little bit, slightly shy of having said so much so quickly and so much more loudly than usual, and Selyse snaps,

 

 

   “Sit up straight!” which puts the iron back in Shireen's spine immediately, and then sneeringly interrogates,

 

 

   “What exactly is it you think you need to read in all these books you imagine? Books are costly, and you won't have the time or means for frivolous expenses and pursuits like that if you're going to be running your own household - you are not going to be a _scholar_ , you are going to be a lady!”

 

 

   Shireen's heart twists at the way her mother emphasises the word 'scholar' as though it were a contemptible, or at least fairly useless profession, beneath notice, entirely unenviable as a way of life, and she thought she had done well in explaining just what draws her to books, their usefulness and how much practical application they can have, but it seems her mother does not think so.

 

 

   “I shall confer with Cressen as to which language is most appropriate to begin study of,” Stannis declares, in that severe tone of his which indicates that his decision is utterly final and no argument is welcome, nor will any be heard, and Selyse narrows her eyes at him.

 

 

   “But my lord, surely - ” she begins, causing Shireen's toes to clench and her teeth to set in fear that her mother might succeed in talking Stannis out of it, but Selyse is not a woman with any gift for wheedling or diplomatic presentation, and Stannis is not a man who changes his mind or has ever proven receptive to even the most accomplished of diplomatic overtures if they have gone against his own decision, and he quells his wife with a look that has her subsiding over her plate and her face souring into sullen acceptance at once.

 

 

   “You have made an intelligent case for a study of language,” Shireen's father says to her, though she feels he is saying it to drive the point home to her mother as much as to reiterate his previous statement, for he does dislike having to repeat himself,

 

 

   “Cressen and I will discuss which is most suitable to begin with, and if you apply yourself and progress quickly, perhaps in time we can look into expanding your studies further. I do expect,” he says further, with a solemn look at her,

 

 

   “That you will work hard to do me credit in this. I will accept nothing less than reports of diligence from Cressen, Shireen. If indeed you prove too young to make a serious study of language, we will not revisit the topic again, and it must be a thing you choose to devote yourself to when you are full-grown, in your leisure time. Do you understand?”

 

 

   “Oh, yes, father - thank you!” Shireen breathes, eyes starry and heart brimful of anticipation and gratitude,

 

 

   “I promise, I'll work ever so hard - ”

 

 

   Her father lifts a hand to stop her, looking suddenly a little uncomfortable, and he insists gruffly,

 

 

   “You're not to tire yourself. I shall leave it to Cressen to see your time is divided sensibly. Now, if you are finished with your meal, you may go.”

 

 

   Shireen knows better than to respond in words when her father is looking this shade of discomfited, for it seems to her that sometimes, there is a certain curt weariness to the way he speaks which seems to say to her that he is weary of words themselves, and she is moved by a desire not to burden him with more of the same that might cause him to feel a need to give any in return, and besides she knows her mother prefers her silent, so she only nods and leaves the table and pays her parents the courtesy she has been raised to, and leaves the room quickly when her father dismisses her with another wave of his hand.

 

 

   She is so excited for the morning to come and with it some news of her father's having spoken to Cressen and decided which language to allow Shireen to begin studying that she can hardly sleep, and so on the morrow when she goes to her lessons with her mother, Selyse has ample opportunity to snipe and peck at her throughout of how Shireen is clearly too young and flighty to be given such opportunities when she is already so immaturely distracted by them, and how further she is clearly yet to fully recover from her little upset -

 

 

   “ - and why a weak little thing like you should be looking for more work when you can barely shoulder what is apportioned you already, I can't fathom,” she gripes, looking down her nose at Shireen, but then allowing, dispassionately,

 

 

   “At least you aren't given to shirking.”

 

 

   It is the closest her mother has come to complimenting her in a long while, and it lifts Shireen's spirits enough that she forgets all the other comments for a time and bends over her sewing with renewed vigour. When finally Selyse sends her off for her breakfast, Shireen finds she has something of an appetite again, so by the time Edric and Devan come to find her, she has cleaned her bowl and is quite ready to follow them to her lessons with Cressen, which they today have been permitted to join her for.

 

 

   “My lady,” Devan greets her rather stiffly, bowing, and Shireen laughs and dips her knees to him properly, but Edric just darts forward and grabs her hand and winningly teases,

 

 

   “ _Cousin_ ,” though he knows he's not supposed to call her such and it's likely just as much for Devan's benefit, and begins to pull her along with him, Devan frowning at the display.

 

 

Shireen knows Devan is just as aware as she of the thrashing Edric is courting by bringing up his relation to her, if Selyse should hear of it, but more than that, Shireen thinks Devan disapproves of how quickly Edric casts aside the formality instilled in him once they are all alone, as if their punishment for failing her only merits observing under the watchful eyes of the adults. Stannis gave them a lesson in how to behave where she is concerned, and its purpose was to ensure they will be better equipped to respond appropriately should there be a need for her to rely on them in future. It clearly sits ill with Devan that Edric shrugs it off so carelessly as soon as there are no witnesses but they three, as if he were only wearing the skin of the lesson learnt so long as it suited him to and has not really taken it to heart.

 

 

   “She's _your_ lady too,” Devan lectures seriously,

 

 

   “And she's not for tugging at - we're to be respectful and responsible, lord Stannis says.”

 

 

   “She _is_ my cousin though,” Edric tells him, a hint of loftiness showing through his playful air,

 

 

   “So it can't be disrespectful. And she doesn't mind, do you Shireen?”

 

 

   Shireen thinks she ought to mind - by the look on Devan's face, she knows she should at least pretend that she does, to check Edric's presumptive ways - and perhaps she does a little, she thinks she minds that it seems he is putting himself forward like this above Devan somehow, using his connection to Shireen to get away with more and take back the familiarity they had all three built together whilst the storm raged but which her father has made sure they know is not to continue now that the boys are truly in training to be squires, even though Devan is not doing it because he's been told not to, but Edric is so very charming, and Shireen is not used to being charmed...

 

 

   “As long as Mother doesn't hear...” she finds herself murmuring, looking about in case Selyse is in fact about to swoop in on them, and then Shireen adds, conscientiously,

 

 

   “And you'd best not pull at me where she might see - she'll be terribly angry with you.”

 

 

   The aggrieved air Devan exudes tells her all she need know of his feelings on her neglecting to take Edric more firmly to task for his behaviour, but she hasn't really been with them in days now and she was so worried that they would think badly of her for her little episode on the beach - or failing that for how angry her father has been with them for how they responded to it and how hard he's been having them work for it since - that she just wants things to return to the way they were, the three of them having fun together where they may.

 

 

   The smug look on Edric's face does cause her a pang of guilt though, as does the put-upon sigh Devan expels as a result, but then Edric tucks her hand into his arm and insists,

 

 

   “We'll just escort you properly, then, she can't be angry over that,” and Shireen shares an apologetic look with Devan as Edric for all his talk does indeed fairly drag her along by his side as they make their way to meet Cressen.

 

 

   When Shireen has lessons alongside the boys, they take place in the library, and not at the Painted Table as when she has lessons alone, for the boys are not so advanced yet as she and need no distraction from the basic lessons of their letters and their reading, which the Table would surely be, so that is where they head, but Cressen is not there awaiting them when they arrive, and the boys turn to Shireen as though she may know why this is, but she can think of only two reasons there could be for Cressen's absence, and it worries her when he is usually so punctual in these matters.

 

 

   “Perhaps he is in the rookery,” she reasons, stepping into the library further although Cressen is clearly not here, and she bites at her lip briefly before adding, unnecessarily,

 

 

   “He _ought_ to be here... Unless he was sent for to attend father, of course...”

 

 

   Edric's expression turns from bored to impish as he realises,

 

 

   “Then we can play until he returns!” but Devan glares at him and with no small measure of scorn criticises,

 

 

“That's irresponsible!” and then he looks to Shireen and suggests,

 

 

   “I could look for him in the rookery, my lady?”

 

 

   “Yes, please, Devan,” Shireen thanks him with relief, concern for Cressen at the forefront of her mind,

 

 

   “The stairs are so hard on his poor legs, he may need help - ”

 

 

“If he can't use the stairs, you should get a new maester,” Edric opines carelessly, not even looking up from where he's poking the tip of a readied quill pen into the writing table, and Devan's face flames with anger.

 

 

   “Don't interrupt her!” he shouts, and Edric only rolls his eyes which does nothing but rouse Devan further, and Shireen steps between them before there can be a true altercation and puts her hand on Devan's arm, gently insisting,

 

 

   “Never mind that, Devan - will you please see if Cressen is in the rookery? If he has fallen he may need someone - ”

 

 

   The slight softening of Devan's glare is gone in the instant Edric huffs,

 

 

   “Then you'll _have_ to get a new maester,” and Devan tears free of Shireen's grasp easily to rush at Edric and swipe at him, though he dodges in time, and Shireen watches in dumb horror for a second or three as a chase begins, Edric using the table to keep between himself and the angry Devan intent on disciplining him, but her cries of,

 

 

   “Stop it! _Stop fighting!_ ” are useless and drowned by Edric's whooping mirth as if this were some new game, and Devan's shouts of what awaits Edric if Devan catches him, but when Edric decides he can more easily evade Devan by climbing on top of the table to run the length of it, his muddy boots crushing pens and papers alike underfoot, Shireen expels a shriek at the sacrilegious sight so piercing, it halts Devan in his tracks and has him gaping at her, and causes Edric to lose his footing and tumble off the table in a crashing heap, his hair in wild disarray as he stares at her in shock from the floor.

 

 

   She stops herself almost at once, quite shocked herself at her own loudness, but the sound continues to ring within the confines of the thick stone walls, and before even that has dissipated she finds herself overwhelmed with an anger of her own that needs expression.

 

 

   “How _dare_ you fight like this - this is _just_ what father meant you _not_ to do, wasting time like this - ” she scolds them, pointing at Devan and ordering,

 

 

   “Go and look for maester Cressen right now!” and while he scrambles to comply, she rounds on the still-prostrate Edric and crosses her arms, and lets him have it.

 

 

   “As for you - how dare you be so unkind! After how poor Cressen has worked to make you welcome and help you learn your lessons so you can act the proper little lord just like you wish to be, this is how you speak of him? And then behaving like this - upsetting Devan on purpose like that, and climbing all over the papers - _maester Cressen's work!_ \- and spoiling them with your filthy boots, Edric, how _dare_ you - you _are_ irresponsible, and spoiled, and you will tidy that table at once, and you will show every ruined paper and pen to maester Cressen when he is found, and ask to be punished for your carelessness, and if you will not, I shall tell my father just how little you seem to care for _his_ lessons in duty and respect, and then perhaps you will learn it better by his hand!”

 

 

   When her words are spent, Edric's face is ashen, and he sits and goggles at her in silence, looking quite as though she might as well have struck him about the head and shaken his brains about, and then just as she begins to fear perhaps he did take a blow to his thick head when he fell, he sniffs and allows his eyes to become watery, and affects a wheedling tone, pouting,

 

 

   “How cruel you are, cousin - I fell off a table just now! You might at least ask if I was _hurt_...”

 

 

   “If you were really hurt you would have said,” Shireen snaps, steeling herself against the accusation that she might have failed to extend her own kindness to her potentially injured cousin, but she decides now is the time to bring another lesson to bear, and reminds Edric,

 

 

   “And you are not to call me that - especially not if you are only doing it to make me feel sorry for scolding you when you know you deserve to be scolded! That is a churlish thing to do, and you know that as well!”

 

 

   Finally he does look chastened, and he gets to his feet sullenly, but with a head bowed in deference to her at least, and then he seems to really see what a mess he's made of the table, and he greys again, his brows pinching together in concern, asking her fearfully,

 

 

   “Would you really tell lord Stannis if I don't put this right, Shireen?”

 

 

   “I will,” Shireen vows, placing as much weight in it as she can and doing her utmost to refuse any sympathy for Edric's cowed expression and how angry she knows her father will be with him if he finds out about this, repeating her condition,

 

 

   “Unless you put it right and ask Cressen's forgiveness for everything you have broken and accept whatever punishment he gives you, I shall tell my father, and you may trust he will be a good deal angrier than Cressen!”

 

 

   This seems to be enough to spur Edric into frantic action, seeing him hurry to neaten everything and gather together all that he's stepped on and damaged by his recklessness and lacking respect for the library's resources.

 

 

   “Paper is expensive, Edric,” Shireen lectures him as he works to correct his foolishness under her critical eye,

 

 

   “Quill pens require special feathers, and ink requires work to make - we are lucky to have these things, and to have such a wise old teacher as maester Cressen who knows so much. You must learn to be thankful for these things, and to respect them. Many will never have these opportunities you have been given, and you have no right to behave as though you deserve them just for being who you are - if my father were not so dutiful, he would not have provided you with all this, so it is your duty to appreciate them and show that in how you behave here.”

 

 

   If there is one thing Shireen understands by now, it is duty, and how her luck in having access to things like this library and Cressen's wisdom also confers a duty upon her not to take these precious resources lightly. She will not allow Edric to think himself above that duty when he has been given so much - her patience with his inflated sense of entitlement will not extend to that.

 

 

   Even a king's son has no right to put up his nose at the chance to learn in such an environment, and Devan is quite right that Edric is still bastard-born, and Shireen knows enough of the world now to realise that it is very uncommon for a bastard child to be given the sort of opportunities Edric has been given. He has them only because his mother is also nobly born and her family have been generous in not casting out the child entirely.

 

 

   These last few nights, her father has impressed upon her just how important it is for her to remember to be thankful for her station and mindful of all the responsibility which comes with it, and so she won't allow Edric to dodge the lesson either. It is for his own good, she decides, that she will not forgive him this until she can be sure he has truly learnt it and means to keep to reformed behaviour, which she will watch him closely for. She will not relent until he seems truly repentant.

 

 

   “I didn't mean to make you cross, Shireen,” he tries earnestly, eyeing her over the pile of papers he's gathered together in a loose stack, but she shakes her head - he is not addressing the salient point in this.

 

 

   “That isn't important,” she insists,

 

 

   “You were rude. I won't let you be rude, and I won't let you do yourself a disservice by refusing to understand and appreciate what you have.”

 

 

   This is what she herself has been taught, and it's clear to her that her cousin has not been taught it, or else his behaviour in general would be very different, so she feels perhaps it is time he was told these things so that he can begin to make improvements that will serve him in future.

 

 

   “Will you forgive me, cousin?” he whines, eyes large and liquid like that of a small dog begging for scraps, but her sharp eyes note that he has slowed his efforts to make the table tidy again, so she narrows them at him.

 

 

   “I might, if you stop trying to make me do it before you've earned it so you won't have to do what you've promised to and tidy up properly!” she says coldly, and he flinches, caught in his manipulation, and bends to his task again.

 

 

   She turns away a little, trying to look haughty and forbidding like her mother often does, hoping it will dissuade him from making any further attempts to appeal to her before he has finished clearing up after his nonsense, but she makes sure she can still see him out of the corner of her eyes, and is pleased that he stops pouting soon and sets to tidying more effectively, apparently giving up trying to get back in her good graces for now and taking her condition seriously.

 

 

   Shireen does not, like her mother, care about the questionable circumstances of Edric's birth, but she _does_ care about the distasteful way he's choosing to act.

 

 

   She greatly mislikes that he seems to think it a better use of his time and energy to plague her for her forgiveness rather than just do what she has told him to do in order to earn it. It seems to her a strange dishonest instinct, and to indicate a lacking respect for her decision. Surely if he thought much of her he would not devote himself to trying to sway and charm her like this rather than just get on with what he's been told he must do because it was he who made the mess? Surely if he thought much of her he would not have tried to cause her to feel guilt for scolding him when she was well within her rights to do so by pretending he might be hurt so that he could provoke her sympathies and weasel out of the consequence of his misbehaviour?

 

 

   These thoughts so trouble her that when maester Cressen appears in the doorway, much stooped and propped up on a solicitous Devan's shoulder, she does not note their coming until Cressen wheezes,

 

 

   “Seven bless us - what is all this?” but then she whirls to face him and flies to embrace him with care, noticing how he seems drawn and winded and to have great need of Devan's support.

 

 

   “Oh, Cressen - are you well? I worried so when you were not here - Devan, the chair - ” she babbles, taking as much of Cressen's weight upon her own arm as she can and disquieted by how frail and light he feels to her even though she realises he is still listing to the side Devan is on so as not to burden her too much, far smaller as she is, but between them they lead him to his great chair at the end of the table where the sorry pile of Edric's broken things have been laid for his inspection, and once Cressen is settled there with a deep sigh as he rests a moment, she explains,

 

 

   “Edric was terribly rude and Devan went to strike him, but he jumped on to the table, and stepped on everything, and it made me so angry, I told him to put it all right, but these things are ruined, you see...” she trails off and fixes her eyes intently on Edric, who has slunk to the other end of the table and is scuffing his boots upon the floor with a low-bent head.

 

 

   It redeems him only slightly to her that he jumps to attention once she has left him the room to speak up for himself, and comes to stand in front of Cressen and admit to his transgressions.

 

 

   “My lady Shireen has already scolded me, maester, but I know I deserve to be punished for being careless with things that do not belong to me,” he says heavily, and, Shireen is glad to see, without any attempt at glossing over things with charm or guile, and he is very respectful in adding,

 

 

   “I am ready to accept any punishment you think fair for my misdeeds.”

 

 

   Cressen hums distractedly as he sifts through the pile of disturbed items laid before him, his hands trembling a little as he assesses the damage, and Shireen clings to his wide sleeve and holds her breath, hoping that he will not find anything of great importance to have been destroyed or require redoing because of Edric's coarse treatment of Cressen's things, but at length Cressen only sighs once more and shakes his head.

 

 

   “Nothing of great value has been ruined, but you were very careless, my boy - I shall have to confer with my lord Stannis regarding a fitting punishment, for I fear you yet have much to learn of what is required of you,” he says sternly, and Edric's face spasms in anguish and unhappy anticipation, but Shireen glares at him in the brief moment where it appears he may think to argue with Cressen's decision, and then he deflates, bowing deeply to the old maester instead and in grave, hollow tones murmuring,

 

 

   “If that seems right to you, maester, I accept it.”

 

 

   Shireen nods. She notes Devan's expression remaining completely blank, and thinks better of him for not choosing to gloat even a little, but then of course maester Cressen looks up at Devan by his side and adds as an afterthought,

 

 

   “And you should know better than to fight in a library, the both of you! I am very disappointed. I am sure lord Stannis will feel similarly on the matter of your requiring stricter discipline than even we had thought.”

 

 

   At that Devan's face twitches, but he bows to Cressen at once and promises,

 

 

   “We will do better.”

 

 

   “You will have to,” Cressen remarks, dry and wry and not a little grumpy, waving his hand at them both and instructing,

 

 

   “Take this refuse over there, and then I expect you both to be ready to learn!” and as they jump to it, not even squabbling silently over which of them is to take more of the dirtied and crushed things away to look better for it, Cressen transfers all his attention to Shireen with a twinkling smile of indulgent fondness and passes his hand over her hair gently, patting a little in a way she thinks may be not entirely voluntary but perhaps due to tremors in his old bones, and she smiles back at him, still nursing a little fear in her heart at how fragile he seems today.

 

 

   “You did very well to scold them,” Cressen praises her,

 

 

   “I'm sure I could not manage all you children if I hadn't you to be my best help, my lady.”

 

 

   “I should not have shouted, I don't think,” Shireen admits, with a shadow of guilt upon her for the memory of just how unexpectedly loud she was earlier, so unlike herself,

 

 

   “But it made me so angry that they were fighting here, and then Edric was on the table stepping on all your things, and I lost my temper...”

 

 

   “Young men need a tight rein, child,” Cressen imparts to her sagely,

 

 

   “For their own growth and betterment, they cannot be given their heads too often. You did very well to assert yourself. They must learn to heed you; your lord father is teaching them as much, it is as well for you to drive home the lesson.”

 

 

   Shireen nods at the words, slightly comforted by them that her instinct to demand better behaviour of the boys seems to have been correct, but then Cressen's smile becomes conspiratorial and he beckons her closer with a finger crooked as much with age as anything, and he shares,

 

 

   “I have something for you, my lady.”

 

 

   For a moment she is confused by what he might mean, for it is not his practice to give her gifts, as such, but then a bright hope blazes in her breast and she breathes ,

 

 

   “Is it - ” and before even she can finish expressing her dearest wish, he draws two very small folded and sealed papers from his robe and presses them into her hands, chuckling at her delighted cry.

 

 

   “Oh, it is, it _is!_ ” she exclaims, beyond overjoyed, twirling on the spot and clasping them to her face to hold back tears of happiness,

 

 

   “My letter!”

 

 

   “Two letters,” Cressen corrects her, and she realises that yes of course, there are two, how odd, how unusual - why should there be two? And, she sees, to deepen her bewilderment, with two different seals? - but the boys have returned to the table, and appear to have other questions of the situation.

 

 

   “Who'd be writing to _her_? No one ever writes to _me_ ,” Edric scoffs self-importantly, craning his neck to try and get a better view of the tiny things in Shireen's hands, and Devan shoves him hard.

 

 

   “'Course not - _you're_ not a grand lady, are you?” he proclaims rather disdainfully, completely unimpressed with Edric's swaggering, which only makes Edric roll his eyes and shove back.

 

 

   “Shireen's not _grand_ ,” he argues,

 

 

   “She's only a king's _niece_ \- I'm the king's _son_! If anyone's grand enough to get letters sent them, it's _me_!”

 

 

   “Bastard son,” Devan reminds him bluntly, though Shireen knows they're not supposed to use that term in front of her, for fear of upsetting some delicate sensibility of hers she is sure she does not own, since after all it's just what her mother calls Edric and doesn't seem to care who knows or hears, but Devan continues in lecturing tones,

 

 

   “And she is so a grand lady - she's to inherit after Lord Stannis, my father says, and even if she's a brother who'll get it instead, Shireen'll be wed to a great lord herself some day!”

 

 

   “Your father's just a landed knight - what does he know?” Edric snaps, clearly stung, and Devan glares at him.

 

 

   “Better than you who'll get nothing but what you're given unless you can earn or marry more, and that's if anyone'll have you who couldn't have a trueborn instead, so you'd best start showing Shireen some respect in case someday she's the one you've got to rely on to keep you in breeches and enough food to keep filling them!” he says hotly, and Edric clenches his fists and shouts,

 

 

   “I'll never have to rely on any woman - I'm going to be a great knight just like my father and win all the tourneys, and then I'll have any lady I want and _you'll_ have to bow to _me!_ ”

 

 

   In that moment Shireen thinks, very clearly, that while Edric is dear in his own way, and Shireen loves him because he is her cousin, she finds his arrogance utterly off-putting, and this argument has begun to wear on her with how often she's had to hear it.

 

 

   While she does not agree with her mother's scorn of him, increasingly Shireen does find that she agrees with Devan - that things would go easier for Edric if he would only find a little humility in his position and learn to accept it rather than always grasping for things he will only ever be denied. It seems it would be kinder to him to teach him that lesson now also than have him served it harshly once he's grown and might have some real dignity that could be injured by it.

 

 

   Luckily, she has no need to say any such thing.

 

 

   Cressen's usual good humour has vanished with the resurgence of the boys' argument, and Edric's carelessly discourteous reference to Shireen, and he rises from his chair with greater haste than Shireen thought him yet capable of, and snags Edric's collar easily, cracking his other hand against Edric's face in a blow that leaves an immediate imprint on his cheek, but though the violence startles Shireen she cannot but admit to herself that Edric is lucky that Cressen is indeed so old and relatively infirm and typically forgiving or else he would like as not have got a switching earlier for his treatment of the library, and this is not at all as harsh as he deserves for his continued ill-behaviour - that he seems unable to restrain his tongue even in the presence of the maester speaks volumes as to how badly he needs disciplining.

 

 

   Shireen feels more sorry for how it must have hurt poor Cressen's hand than how it might have hurt Edric, whose eyes don't even water at the blow, proving that it can't have been as hard as it sounded, which would have surprised her at any rate since she has herself only just felt how weak Cressen is today.

 

 

   “Coarse language in front of the lady Shireen - ” Cressen roars, his ancient lungs rattling with the effort, shaking Edric so that Shireen is not sure he means to do it and is not in fact actually shaking with the exertion of it all instead, which frightens her,

 

 

   “This I will not have - such disrespect will _not_ be tolerated - ” Edric's face is bloodless except for the reddened mark of the blow to his cheek, and he stares at Cressen with wide eyes, lips thinned as if he is biting them together, and suddenly Cressen sags slightly and leans heavily upon him, and Devan springs to his side to help him so he won't stagger, and Shireen cries out when Cressen shoves them both from him and stumbles back to his seat instead, heaving for air, his face purpling with rage and the need to breathe, choking,

 

 

   “Out - both of you out - the sight of you offends, leave my library! _Out!_ ” He gathers enough air to thunder at the last word, but they do not obey immediately, though they both flinch at the order, looking to Shireen to have her confirm it, and she is so terrified that if they leave her alone with Cressen when he is taken so unwell, he will die, she shouts,

 

 

   “No! No, don't - Devan, fetch me water for the maester and Edric run for help, do it now!” and she clutches Cressen's hand, her other white-clenched around her letters, and she doesn't need to watch the boys to hear them run to her bidding.

 

 

   “You're not to die, you're not to leave me,” she weeps, and she doesn't know whether she is issuing an order or begging, but Cressen coughs and struggles to breathe, and his eyes grow red and strained, but his pulse under her fingers in his thin withered wrist pounds on, and before long Devan is by them again and helping Cressen to take a sip of water, which seems to calm him a little, and then hasty footsteps ring out and bring Edric back and in his wake -

 

 

   “ _Father!_ Father, please - Cressen can't breathe - ” Shireen pleads, and then her father has taken over ministering to Cressen, straightening his posture to allow air to flow into his lungs more easily, and helping him to cough through the last of the fits that seem to have been brought on by his sudden burst of unusual activity.

 

 

   With her heart in her throat Shireen watches as Cressen calms and takes more water assisted by her father, and then leans back in his chair and in a thin, thready voice utters,

 

 

   “Thank you, my lord...”

 

 

   A shadow lies over Stannis' face, and his mouth is a grim line, but he says nothing to Cressen - likely, Shireen thinks, to save him having to speak more before he is quite recovered - and when he does speak, she jumps at the tone of his voice, frosted stone but not nearly so comforting.

 

 

   “What happened?” he demands, and Edric shrinks back from it, Devan's mouth quivering as his eyes flit to Shireen's beseechingly, and she understands that it must fall to her to reply.

 

 

   “Edric and Devan argued earlier, and tried to fight. Edric jumped on the table and crushed some things. I made him clean it up and admit it when Devan brought maester Cressen in, and maester Cressen said he would have to tell you but he was not so angry as he might have been, but then - ” she swallows and goes on as steadily as she can,

 

 

   “Then the boys began to argue again, and Edric - Edric was - impolite, and maester Cressen became very angry, and hit Edric, and shouted, and I think - I think it was too much for him to get up so quickly and shout so much, he never shouts usually - ”

 

 

   She knows she is beginning to babble needlessly because she is still shaken by it all and by how reedy Cressen's breathing still seems, whistling through his parted lips as if he is very ill, but she stifles herself before Stannis can do it, and looks to her hand still tightly holding Cressen's, subsiding.

 

 

   “It should not be necessary for Cressen to raise his voice to you,” Stannis says tightly, not, she doesn't think, addressing her in particular, but causing her to feel a great wave of guilt nonetheless,

 

 

   “It should not be necessary for Cressen to discipline you for fighting in the presence of a lady and destructive behaviour.”

 

 

   Shireen squeezes her eyes tightly shut and waits for this to be over - she knew that if Edric's deeds came to Stannis' hearing his displeasure would be terrible, that's why it was the most effective threat she could conceive of to make Edric do better, but Shireen had no desire to see the effects it would have. She wishes herself far away from this, or she would if she weren't so afraid for Cressen and determined to stay with him until he can assure her he is not unwell any longer, so she keeps her eyes closed and waits.

 

 

   Stannis grinds his teeth. It's a horrible sound, Shireen has always thought so, and made worse by knowing she may have some part in its cause.

 

 

   “Cressen, I will leave Shireen with you,” her father says, prompting a slight nod from the old maester,

 

 

   “Shireen - ” she looks up at her father at once, afraid of what he might have to say to her, but though he looks as angry as she has ever seen him, his voice is carefully controlled when he goes on,

 

 

   “You will remain here unless Cressen gives you leave to go,” and she nods to indicate she understands, too frightened to speak, and then his voice hardens considerably as he addresses the boys,

 

 

   “You two - come with me.”

 

 

   He turns on his heel and strides out without another word, and Devan and Edric rush to follow him, leaving Shireen alone with Cressen. She raises her head to watch him carefully, and after a moment or so, he cracks one eye at her and smiles feebly, his voice quavering when he tells her,

 

 

   “Be not afraid, child. I am not going anywhere.”

 

 

   “Do you promise?” she asks at once, though she realises at once how absurd it is, but Cressen only closes his eye once more and makes a low sound in his throat.

 

 

   “Read your letters, child,” he croaks quietly in another moment or so,

 

 

   “I need only rest...”

 

 

   Shireen's hand is cramped and hurting around the letters still but she does not attend them until she has satisfied herself that Cressen's chest rises and falls and he breathes unobstructed, the cup of water near to him should he have need of it. Only then, after this observation holds true and there is no sign of renewed distress in him, does she move to re-examine her letters.

 

 

   The one seal she recognises - it is Rickon's Stark seal, the wolf clearly pressed - but the other is blank, and she cannot think who else would have cause to address anything to her personally, and yet it is addressed such. Shireen does not know anyone beyond her own household and of course Davos who might wish to speak to her at all. Rickon's coming to write to her still seems to her an unlikely miracle of chance. That someone might write to her directly, someone with no seal to their name, is beyond her comprehension or understanding to guess the reason behind, and after the turmoil of Cressen's outburst and ill health she is inclined to fearing the worst, so she breaks the blank seal first, thinking that if it is ill news of some sort, she may soothe her nerves thereafter with Rickon's letter.

 

 

   The letter addresses her very properly, it is the first thing she notices, but all else of its contents are a puzzle and a worry to her from the beginning.

 

 

 _My lady Shireen,_ it reads,

 

_I beg you forgive my presumption in writing to you. I know we have not been introduced and you have no reason to know me or recognise my name and it is not proper, but I write to ask you a boon on behalf of my half-brother, Rickon Stark. He is convinced that you are being treated badly. He fears for your safety. I know your letters are a secret and I promise Rickon told me only because he is so afraid for you and did not know what else to do - I will tell no one my lady but I beg you, if you are indeed well and safe, write and tell Rickon so in all haste - he is so sure you are at risk that I fear what he might do. I cannot control him if you do not satisfy him that you are safe. Please my lady, for his sake. I worry for my brother. He does nothing by halves._

 

 

   Shireen's shock is absolute. So stunned is she that she can read no further for a moment, uncertain that she has not completely misunderstood this strange letter.

 

 

   Rickon is afraid for her safety? It seems so impossible - she can't think why he should be, when it is her who has had to wait for a reply to her last missive because the storms have caused such a delay and cut Dragonstone off from the mainland so long. Surely there was nothing in her last letter to cause alarm? She thinks she mentioned her dreams, but why Rickon should interpret that as Shireen being somehow at risk of coming to harm, she has no idea - unpleasant though they may be, dreams cannot hurt her. If he has gone to someone with his concerns she knows he must have been truly worried for her wellbeing, or she can't think he would have shared their secret, and she can't think how someone else could come to know of the letters if Rickon did not share it since Shireen has told only Cressen and her father and they would not have told anyone else, but this person who calls themselves Rickon's half-brother, why should they write to beg her to disavow Rickon of his fears?

 

 

   Could it truly be that Rickon is so afraid for her or - perhaps _and?_ \- so wild that if he has taken it into his head that Shireen is not safe here at Dragonstone, he will do something drastic that his own kin would struggle to keep him from doing?

 

 

   It is incomprehensible that such a thing should be true. It seems entirely too fantastic, too unreal and unlikely - but there is more to the letter and Shireen reads on.

 

 

_He swore that if he did not hear from you that you were safe, and soon, he will steal you back to Winterfell. I fear the worst if he tries it._

 

 

   Again she needs to stop to let this sink in.

 

 

   The concept is utterly foreign to her - the only reference she has for anyone stealing a maiden from her home is the theft of the young lady Stark by the mad Targaryen. That any _Stark_ should swear to do such a thing for _any_ reason upends her world view to the point where she feels as though she is swimming even though she is sitting down quite securely and leaning on a very sturdy table.

 

 

   The letter ends on a note no less strange than what came before, reading;

 

 

_We would be glad to have you here as an honoured guest and Rickon's friend, if you did come, but please, not like that. I beg you my lady discourage Rickon. We cannot. Your servant, Jon Snow._

 

 

   One thing at least it gets right. She hasn't the faintest glimmer of recognition at the name.

 

 

   “Who _is_ Jon Snow?” she thinks aloud, though the question more to the point seems to be why such a person would write to her, inform her that Rickon intends _unthinkably_ drastic action if dissatisfied that Shireen is safe in her own home, and beg her in tones akin to _grovelling_ to ask Rickon not to do any such thing because apparently his family have little to no control over what their youngest member does.

 

 

   She does not recall seeing any Jon Snow in the book Cressen showed her listing living Starks. Whoever this is, however he has come to learn of the letters, Shireen can only suspect him to be some half-mad imposter.

 

 

   “Hmm? What snow?” Cressen rouses, blinking wearily at her, and Shireen whips her head to look at him in surprise, startled out of her musings and unaware she spoke aloud.

 

 

   “I - ” she begins, but she is so confused she asks,

 

 

   “Jon Snow - who is that?” and Cressen seems as surprised as she is that she has asked the odd question.

 

 

   “Oh? Ah - ” Cressen blinks again, looking now not so much discombobulated with fatigue but as one struggling with how to answer an indelicate query in a delicate way, and it only intrigues Shireen more, but finally Cressen settles on the response,

 

 

   “In the North, the surname Snow is given to children born out of wedlock, as Storm is given here to such as Edric.”

 

 

   Then, Shireen decides, it follows that this Jon Snow is a bastard half-brother of Rickon's. One who must belong to Rickon's household to know him well enough to be Rickon's confidant, to be so close to him that Rickon would tell him of his letters to Shireen. Jon must be to Rickon what Edric is to Shireen, only closer in blood and love both. If he is a bastard half-brother only, of course he would not be permitted to avail himself of the Stark seal in correspondence.

 

 

   Suddenly, it all seems plausible.

 

 

   Horrified, she tears at the wolf-seal of the second letter, spreads it before her with shaking hands, and reads.

 

 

   The runes are scored deep and quickly. The paper is marred with dark smears that are neither ink nor filth.

 

 

_There was blood in your letter. We tasted it to make sure. If they're hurting you on purpose or letting you be hurt Shaggy and me will come and steal you North. Jon says to ask you first and you can ask your parents to visit if you're alright but if you're not we will steal you even if no one else will help. It's not right you being hurt and scared. You should be here with us. We'll protect you._

 

 

   Shireen stares at it until the dark blots begin to swirl into the staves of the runes, until the paper begins to bleed into the grain of the table, until her eyes ache.

 

 

   The lessons.

 

 

   She told Rickon about the lessons. She was hurt and upset. She told him about her fingers hurting. They must have bled onto the paper without her noticing.

 

 

   Rickon noticed, though.

 

 

   Rickon _tasted the blood to make sure_ \- or... no, _we_ , he says - he means _Shaggydog_ , his direwolf - _they_ tasted the blood and read her words, her innocuous comments that her new lessons were difficult and rough on her hands, making it difficult to write - she remembers now.

 

 

   Rickon read those words and feared for Shireen's safety so much that he decided the only solution was to remove her from Dragonstone.

 

 

   To _steal_ her North.

 

 

   This Jon, mentioned in Rickon's letter, seems to have at least counselled him well enough to ask Shireen's mind on the matter before acting, but all else is...

 

 

   Shireen does not know what it is, what to make of it.

 

 

   When first he wrote to her, so long ago now it seems, Cressen told her his words, his actions amounted to a swearing of fealty, but this is so far beyond that, so much more than a simple offer of support.

 

 

   Jon Snow's words seemed too absurdly unbelievable to be credited, before, but now...

 

 

   Now Shireen can almost believe them. That Rickon's conviction is such that if prompted by her, he would at least _attempt_ to come and save her, and he seems to have not the slightest doubt that he and his direwolf can achieve this together **_even if no one else will help_** -

 

 

   This is not a game to him, she realises. He means every word.

 

 

   Either Rickon Stark is mad as a Targaryen, wild as a wolf, or just as his half-brother describes him - beyond the control of even his closest kin when he has set his mind to something, and so like to be both, since **_he does nothing by halves_**.

 

 

   If Rickon is beyond even his family to control, she thinks to herself, coming to a further realisation, what does it say of _her_ that his half-brother appeals to Shireen to impose some boundary and curb his urge to steal her, and that Rickon himself provides that he will do it if only Shireen agrees to it?

 

 

   Her breath comes in stutters and her fingertips feel numb.

 

 

   **_You should be here with us._**

Has anyone ever felt so strongly that she belonged with them?

 

 

   **_We'll protect you._**

Cressen told her that Rickon is a little younger than she. It is utter madness to suggest that a child of no more years than they should ride the length of the land and cross the sea to Dragonstone to _steal_ another child back to the North.

 

 

   It is delusional. It is ridiculous.

 

 

   He has practically written it in _blood_ \- those smears can't be anything else, what dirt stains like that, would be inside the letter when the outside is grubby but otherwise unmarred?

 

 

   He means it enough that his own half-brother fears so much for what may happen if Rickon truly attempts it that he has seen fit to write to Shireen and forfeit his dignity to _beg_ her - to beg a _child_ \- to reassure Rickon and dissuade him from trying it.

 

 

   Either this is some elaborate joke at Shireen's expense, or it is entirely meant in earnest, and in either case, she has no answer for it. She does not know how to respond to such a thing.

 

 

   She is so paralysed with it, with not knowing what to think of it, whether it is really meant or some form of strange, unkind hoax, that when her father returns, she is a long moment unaware that he has done so.

 

 

   He does not address her but Cressen, quietly and calmly, asking some simple question regarding his wellbeing, and Shireen startles so badly that she almost falls out of her seat, sweeping her letters into her hands and down upon her lap in a furtive, guilty motion which her father thankfully seems to take no notice of whatever, intent upon Cressen's soft response, but Shireen's heart is pounding so madly she hears nothing of their exchange, her fingers clenched in the papers, feeling her eyes and back prickle with uncomfortable moisture, and she takes a deep breath and folds the papers together and then tucks them into her sleeve quickly, gathering her wits about her again in time for her father to look to her with a perturbed expression.

 

 

   “Shireen, are you well?” he asks, and she nods violently, her neck reporting its abuse in a snap down her shoulder like a poorly plucked harp-string, and her father frowns.

 

 

   “I have had the tale of what occurred from the boys. They have been punished. Edric more so than young Seaworth. That boy has much to learn,” he informs her, grinding his teeth a little at the last, and she nods a little less vigorously, eager to agree and be alone again with her whirling thoughts, but Stannis goes on,

 

 

   “I understand he earned his blow from Cressen for speaking out of turn in your presence.”

 

 

   Shireen doesn't know what she's meant to say to that, so she looks to Cressen instead, who just nods a little at her, and her father sighs.

 

 

   “I fear no one has yet made it clear to the boy that he leads a life of great privilege,” he laments grimly,

 

 

   “So it falls to us. I am glad you did your part to educate him, though it should not have to be your burden. In future, inform myself or maester Cressen if Edric speaks out of turn or fails to behave properly where you are concerned, or fails in his duties to your knowledge. You do him no favours by allowing him to shirk his duty, Shireen, for in doing so, he fails in his duty to himself to seize the opportunities he has been given to better himself and craft a worthy future where there could easily have been no chance at one.”

 

 

   “Yes, father,” Shireen intones obediently, glad in a distant way to be validated in her earlier handling of Edric, but desperate now to be alone with her letters to make sense of them and decide what to do with them.

 

 

“Your uncle the king is not discreet in his tastes, Shireen. I would rather not have you exposed to such things but to understand Edric you must understand that he is not my brother's only by-blow. In blood Edric is your cousin through my brother and your Florent kin in his mother, but in station, he has no more right to call you cousin than any of my brother's bastards born to barmaids or farmgirls, of which there are many,” Stannis tells her harshly, and Shireen blinks at him.

 

 

   She knows all this - her mother has not been discreet about this anymore than her uncle is apparently discreet about his habit of taking women to bed who are not his queen and fathering bastards on them. It is not a _delicate_ thing, but it is the truth. Shireen may be a lady, and in many ways she may well be sheltered, but this she knows all about between Edric's own flapping tongue and her mother's bitter comments and instructions to Shireen regarding how to view Edric as well as the odd snide remark about the king's lacking virtues. Why her father should feel a need to speak of it to her she doesn't know.

 

 

   What she does see in this is an opportunity to ask her father whether she might do right by another issue far more central in her mind.

 

 

   “I understand, father,” she tells him, and then very carefully lays out,

 

 

   “Would it be... very wrong of me, then, to speak to someone else who is not related to me but is in the sort of... position Edric is in? Someone not trueborn?”

 

 

   “Of course not,” Stannis replies curtly,

 

 

   “The world is full of bastards, Shireen. If you were not allowed to speak to any such, you would soon find your options for conversation severely limited. It may even be that there will be times ahead where you will have a need to be in such company, and you will have no other choice. Birth does not determine worth. It can only act as an indicator. You must be guided by necessity, and your own judgment of good character.”

 

 

   “I see...” Shireen says slowly, her mind racing, adding softly as she argues in her heart that she has known nothing but goodness of Rickon thus far and must base her judgment upon that and be true to it and resist her fears that she may be the butt of some awful joke,

 

 

   “Thank you, father. I only wanted to know to be sure I wouldn't accidentally bring shame to you if I did have to speak to someone not trueborn.”

 

 

   “Whatever your mother may say, many a trueborn is a bastard by nature, and many's the bastard born has a truer heart than most,” Stannis says wryly,

 

 

   “But I did not come here to discuss the merits of breeding. I was near to here earlier because I had a need to bid Cressen send a reply for me to a letter I had at storms-break. There is a matter of some urgency that requires me to attend the king.”

 

 

   “Oh, you're leaving?” Shireen replies, though her thoughts are elsewhere, dwelling on the difficulty of what to write to Rickon - whether she should write at all - whether she should respond to Jon Snow's letter as well if she does -

 

 

   “I wanted to settle the matter of your educational allowances at the same time, but I see now that Cressen is in no state to attend to the matter,” Shireen's father says gruffly, a spasm of pain crossing Cressen's face with it, though Stannis' own face is shuttered to emotion, and Shireen frowns as he continues,

 

 

   “As such, I have decided I may as well send for a new maester now and see that settled in the same instance.”

 

 

   Shireen's heart clenches, and she feels her eyes fill with tears as she looks to Cressen, whose own face is now crumpled in sorrow, knowing that he as she is deeply distressed by this, for it must mean he is no longer hale enough to be Shireen's tutor -

 

 

   “I have also decided to present you at court. The visit will be brief, and my brother made some noise about it in his last writing, some fatuous nonsense about his own daughter and blood ties - in any event, it will mean less disruption for your education in the long run and an opportunity to get a tedious duty over with fairly painlessly.”

 

 

   “I - I don't understand,” Shireen whispers, tears spilling over her cheeks as she looks back to Stannis uncomprehendingly, and her father sighs.

 

 

   “You're to go to King's Landing, child.”

 

 

   -

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Owing to continued ill-health on my part, no updates on anything will be forthcoming until all most recent works have at least three comments on their most recent chapters. This seems to be the only way to keep me from doing too much and setting my recovery back even further in my over-excitement.


	10. Chapter 10

 

 

 

   At first, Rickon tried to be patient. To heed Jon, and wait for Shireen's reply.

 

 

   At first, Rickon did nothing to further his plan of stealing Shireen from the South if it should transpire that she was indeed being mistreated - he did not mention it again, to either Jon or his mother and father, or give any indication that he desired to leave Winterfell for any purpose.

 

 

   In fact, he kept closer to home than he had been wont to do for a long time, not roaming so far with Osha that they couldn't return to the castle within a day or so, and making a point of spending most nights in the keep, if not always in his own room, the close quarters and proximity to many others as always stifling to him and irritating to Shaggydog.

 

 

   His parents seemed to soon forget his outburst at dinner - no disciplinary action ever arising from it, at least - and they never made mention of it to him again, or of his tale of his friend's woes and his pleading that his family help him come to her aid, and if Rickon didn't speak to them about it again they didn't seem to note it, for he didn't speak to them at all.

 

 

   His turn to silence went unnoticed as well, as if the shift from his habitual taciturn keeping of his own counsel alone to complete disinterest in conversing with Catelyn and Ned for any reason was perfectly normal, and Catelyn for her part seemed not to notice it or perhaps to consider it a fair exchange for Rickon's new habit of not running off for so long at a time, and his new interest in actually going to his lessons with Bran and the maester. Certainly, she made so much fuss over _that_ as to be unbearable, but Rickon wasn't deterred as he might have been by it, however much that sort of encouragement of what his family considered to be worthy pursuits would normally have been nothing to him but incentive to work harder at avoiding them all, their insistence on his conformity having always chafed.

 

 

   Rickon kept to himself, kept close to home, and kept his head down.

 

 

   He applied himself to his reading, and, to the surprise of all, the study of geography. He could be found at times spreading maps out on the library floor, using Shaggydog's paws to help hold down the vellum rolls, fingers tracing the inked roads and names that made up the realm. His mother was overjoyed at this un-expected scholarly impulse in him, glorying in reports from the maester that Rickon seemed to be finally coming around to more civilised ways, and that he had begun to ask relevant questions rather than meet each lesson with either sullen laconism or vociferous revolt - a welcome change in him as far as the maester was concerned, leading him to look favourably on Rickon for the first time ever and almost forgive Rickon's past harassment of the ravens.

 

 

   Indeed, Rickon no longer went to visit the ravens, or at least it appeared that he did not, for he began to do so only in the dead of night, and only every few days, having through pointed questioning and investigation worked out the approximate length of time it should take for any raven to make its way to Dragonstone, and thus extrapolating how long it might reasonably take an urgent reply to make its way back. This cut out the need to visit the rookery daily to ensure he could intercept any message from Shireen, and left his only purpose to go there until such time as he could begin to expect the ravens might have a letter for him the continuing need to acclimate them to his presence in preparation for future circumvention of the need for maesterly interference in his correspondence.

 

 

   For a full turn of the moon and more, this fragile peace reigned.

 

 

   The truce between Rickon and the world could not hold, though, doomed from the beginning, and the passing of the date whereupon all careful inquiry had assured him should materialise a reply from Shireen to decide the question for him of what to do broke it.

 

 

   His first attempt went largely unnoticed for its relative novelty after such a long while of his quiet inactivity, and was no true attempt at all, nothing but a simple ranging towards the border accompanied by Shaggydog - gone at nightfall, away for a few days, back before anyone had truly missed him. Practice more than anything, to gauge timings and grow accustomed to going South when in the past all his excursions both with Osha and alone just he and Shaggy had been into the North, further into the wilds and the cold, always his preference and his preference still, the very act of going South grating on him and making practice necessary to harden his resolve to the task before him.

 

 

   He had promised Shireen that he would do it if need be, and he wouldn't turn away from it at the last just because it felt like going the wrong way - it could be overcome by focusing on the fact that going to save Shireen _could not_ be going the wrong way.

 

 

   They made it quite far undetected before turning back, making him hopeful for the true journey he might have to undertake.

 

 

   When he returned, it was remarked upon only by Bran who had grown used to Rickon's presence at lessons, and by Osha that she was surprised he had not brought her along wherever he had gone, but they were easily put off by assurances that he only went because Shaggy was restless from Rickon's recent homebound ways. No one questioned it, for it wasn't strange - what was strange to their thinking was that Shaggydog had not grown restless sooner and needed a good hunt to run wild.

 

 

   Only Rickon knew - because he had felt and done it too - that Shaggydog was saving himself up in case they needed to be away suddenly. They couldn't well have gone running or off on a hunt in case Shireen's reply came while they were gone - that was why Rickon waited to make the first scout southward until the earliest time such a reply could have been in hand had been and gone. He did not want to risk missing the reply, or risk missing it only to return to it from some pleasure-trip into the forests to run off some energy which he and Shaggy might then not have when needed to go and save Shireen if she gave the word.

 

 

   All through the otherwise successful southward scouting trip, Rickon hoped that they would return to find Shireen's reply had arrived in their absence, only delayed by a very little from what he'd believed he could expect after all his painstaking research. He'd gone so far as to speak to the maester, if in a round-about way to throw the odious man off the scent in case he began to make connections, and felt confident he knew well enough how long a time could pass before he could begin to worry in earnest and disregard Jon's advice to remain calm and in the North when Shireen might be suffering in her awful dragon-infested southern home.

 

 

   There was no letter when he came home from the scouting trip no one questioned, even with the little extra time he had allowed for it to account for potential delays attributed to the raven being inept. He had been patient, he had held back to allay Jon's fears and give Shireen time to decide, but there was no reply, and in the crypt her blood lay hidden inside her last letter, the remembered taste seeming to reach him through the cold earth and layers of ancient stone as soon as he stepped foot in Winterfell again, and the silence decided the matter for him at last.

 

 

   His first actual attempt was cut short by Arya, thinking he was only going out to exercise Shaggydog and insisting on dodging Catelyn and her own tedious lessons to join him and go for a romp with Nymeria. She proved impossible to shake off, and that put paid to that, wasting two whole days and earning him nothing but a half-hearted scolding from Catelyn when he and Arya came back and he was told off for encouraging his sister's wild ways.

 

 

   Privately, he didn't see the problem and thought it ridiculous that Arya shouldn't be allowed to run about if she wanted to since she wasn't much good or much interested in the indoor things Sansa liked so much, and even if he had agreed that Arya was best off at home, he'd still have encouraged her to dodge the sewing and what-have-you just to spite Catelyn, whom he had not forgiven for her profound betrayal in not supporting him when he came to her despite his misgivings and asked for help with what to do for Shireen, but he could not risk his mother's attention, and so he did nothing but slip silently away once her back was turned and her focus on reprimanding Arya once more, and set about plotting his next attempt.

 

 

   This one was foiled by Osha, insisting on accompanying him since it had been so long since the two of them had roamed out together, and he dared not awaken her suspicions by refusing, knowing she'd have scented something afoot if he had.

 

 

   They spent a few days hunting, during which Rickon grew steadily more resentful and restless despite the invigorating activity after such a lengthy period of relative boredom in the castle, and finally, after Shaggydog brought down a hind by springing into the midst of a small flock they were stalking and laying into it rather more viciously than usual, spurred to do so by his and Rickon's joint and growing frustration, Osha decided they ought to return to the castle, sensing that neither of their hearts were in prolonging the outing.

 

 

Still no letter from Shireen had arrived, and Rickon's concern could no longer be staved off. He resolved to redouble his efforts to get away and go South, but it soon became apparent that Jon had realised that the short-term effect his advice had brought about had abated, and that he had set himself to the task of watching and subtly restricting Rickon's movements.

 

 

   Ghost stalked Shaggydog at all hours, following his scent trail wherever he went and heading him off whenever he and Rickon tried to leave the castle. It was Jon who put Osha up to hunting with Rickon, claiming it would be a nice trip for them both after Rickon had been cooped up and occupied with studies indoors for so long, suggesting it as a reward for Rickon's recent _good behaviour._

 

 

Rickon could easily see what Jon was doing, and understand why - Jon was still afraid of what Rickon meant to do, the poor coward, and Rickon felt sorry for that, but it couldn't be helped, and it couldn't be allowed. He had to go to Shireen as promised. It had been too long without a reply when her last letter had been so disturbing. There was no telling how badly hurt she might be by now if her parents had not thought better of their neglect. It was not _acceptable_ that Jon should seek to get in the way of what was an entirely reasonable rescue mission when he also would not assist in the endeavour.

 

 

   But get in the way he did.

 

 

   He arranged for Robb, Theon, and himself to invite Rickon to join them in their yard-work, clearly hoping it would exhaust Rickon to run about fetching arrows for them and helping them into and out of their protective gear, playing at squiring, and that it might distract him to be allowed to practice basic swordplay and marksmanship when the consensus was otherwise that he was yet a touch too young for such proper training exercises.

 

 

   It did nothing of the sort, of course, accomplishing only the birth of Theon's ugly jealousy that a _child_ should be a better shot than him even though Rickon's bow was a rough thing made for him by Osha, who had also taught him its use as soon as he could feasibly draw back a string so that he might be better equipped for the wilds on their trips, and Theon had years of practice and not an inconsiderable amount of height and strength in advantage over him.

 

 

   It gave Rickon a little pleasure to see Theon throw his own equipment into the muck in a fit of jealous anger and then be reprimanded sharply for it by the yard master overseeing them, but apart from that he derived no great enjoyment from spending time with his brothers, the whole thing soured for him by Jon's continual, anxious, furtive looks and the knowledge that it was all a manipulation to attempt to distract Rickon from keeping his word to Shireen.

 

 

   Rickon bided his time, not letting on that he was deeply angered at Jon's obvious ploys to keep him at Winterfell, but inwardly seething at the gall of his half-brother's persistent notion that he could or had any right to impose restrictions upon Rickon when he hadn't even the honour or the bravery to support Rickon's entirely noble cause as a good brother should.

 

 

   Perhaps worse than all that though was the way Jon suddenly took an interest in the tale of the Stark lady who was stolen by a mad dragon-lord which started a long and terrible war - coaxing Sansa with flattery to sing the related songs and encouraging Bran to tell the story in his giftedly dramatic fashion ostensibly to while away the evening hours, and asking pointedly strategic questions of various members of the household in Rickon's presence, always with the slant that the theft of the lady had caused suffering unimaginable to countless people.

 

 

   It was tiresome to say the least, but worse than _that_ was the glaring flaw in this device of Jon's, as far as Rickon saw it.

 

 

   If he meant all this talk of the awful consequences of stealing ladies from their homes and families to have some corrective effect on Rickon's ideas and plans regarding Shireen's situation and what ought be done about it - which seemed to be the motivation behind this harping on the topic judging by Jon's unsubtle hinting gazes and heavy-handed insistence that Rickon not be left out when it was such an _important_ and _interesting_ story - Jon should perhaps not have chosen to focus on a tale wherein the lady was clearly stolen against her will by a madman from a loving family resulting in massive bloodshed and loss of life on all sides because that same loving family went to war to protect her.

 

 

   Rickon had no intention, after all, of stealing Shireen against her will, and to his mind, any family that could treat her so poorly as it seemed hers did _deserved_ to be deprived of her permanently, and it did not seem obvious to Rickon that Shireen's family would even consider her loss a deprivation, proving them unworthy caretakers. Not only that, but in this pet story of Jon's, it seemed clear that if there _were_ an ideal place to shelter a stolen maiden from various madmen - with which it seemed the world was rife, only serving to prop up Rickon's long-held instinct of meeting all others not immediately recognisable as family with a certain distrust - and people undeserving of her, the North was surely that place.

 

 

   If anything, all this moralistic tale achieved was to frame Rickon's plan as a just and honourable cause by virtue of being exactly the opposite approach to the one which this blighted dragon-prince had chosen, which did not surprise Rickon.

 

 

   Judging by Shireen's feelings on widespread depiction of these beasts, Rickon could only think poorly of any who chose them as their sigil and chose to be associated with it and the apparently unavoidable resulting mania for poor choices in everything from decorating habits to treatment of others. Clearly they were a lesser, unattractive motif and keeping to them was the mark of chronic bad judgment and very poor taste. Unnatural and representative of nothing so much as delusion and grand self-elevation.

 

 

   A shame really, since dragons themselves were terribly interesting, or at least they were in Bran's other stories, but it seemed in keeping with these peoples' general lack of all decency that they had chosen to corrupt the image of an otherwise fascinating creature, and that couldn't be helped.

 

 

   Rickon spent most of those instances firmly distant and musing upon Shaggydog's thoughts once it became clear that Jon was not going to abandon this particularly irritating choice of recurring conversational topic, which was no hardship, but still it made for an awful lot of avoidable boredom.

 

 

   What really pushed him over the edge however, was when Jon himself became _unavoidable_.

 

 

   He took to stationing Ghost outside Rickon's door at night, after the third time Rickon made it as far as one of the gates only to be stopped by Jon, transparently nervous and out of breath despite his casual demeanour, claiming to have been out anyway - an obvious blatant lie - and wondering what Rickon was doing out of bed so late with Shaggydog and dressed to sleep rough, even though he was clearly _fully_ aware of what Rickon was doing and why, only choosing not to address it directly.

 

 

   A sennight of Ghost's stifling vigils and Jon hovering in the background of everything Rickon did, and Rickon decided he'd had enough.

 

 

   “You can't stop me,” he told him, serious and defiant, after Jon bade him a weary goodnight on the eighth day, making ready to go to his room and likely only pretend to sleep so that he could be ready to spring into action in the event Ghost raised the alarm that Rickon was abroad, and Jon's guilty, pained expression was all the answer he needed.

 

 

   His half-brother gave him one anyway.

 

 

   “I have to _try_ , Rickon,” he said, eyes hollow and voice pleading, and Rickon gave no ground.

 

 

   “So do I. I _promised_.”

 

 

   He closed and bolted his door against Ghost's sombre eyes and Jon's exhausted grey face, and set to pacing his floor with Shaggydog watching him alertly.

 

 

   Within the hour, he hit upon a solution.

 

 

   Unbolting and opening his door, he let Shaggy out.

 

 

   Ignoring Ghost, he returned to his room, re-bolted his door, and started securing the length of rope from under his bed - left there after one of his jaunts into the wood where Osha had used it to teach him various things relating to knot-work and climbing - to the post of his bed, and then cutting his linens into lengths to wind together for more rope, tying that to the existing rope, and lowering it all out of the window.

 

 

   Within moments he was in the yard, having alighted upon a lower portion of roof once his rope gave out, and scaled the wall from there downwards, just like climbing with Bran. It was quick work to locate one of the packs he had hidden and go from there outward, meeting Shaggydog after a time and beginning his journey proper.

 

 

   They took a convoluted route to discourage tracking, but not for long, thinking to rely on haste and the element of surprise to put a good bit of ground between them and Winterfell, but still they had not yet got as far as they did on the scouting trip when Osha caught up to them.

 

 

   “You're running away,” was the first thing she had said to him, coming upon them suddenly through the brush,

 

 

   “Why?”

 

 

   He hadn't told her about Shireen's letter. After his parents' betrayal in not heeding his worry, and then Jon working against him, he hadn't wanted to bring the matter before Osha as well only to be laughed at, or have her discourage him, and then earn her watchful eyes on him as well as Jon's seeking to keep him from his promised rescue, but that was before she found him getting away with it, and in the moment, he threw caution to the wind and told the truth, wanting to believe that she might understand, and help.

 

 

   “We're not running away,” he explained,

 

 

   “We're going to get Shireen. Her family's hurting her, and we promised we'd steal her from them if they didn't stop.”

 

 

   “Did she ask for help? How do you know they're still hurting her?” Osha had asked, calmly enough that Rickon's hope that she might support the venture kindled and flared bright even if he balked at the insinuation that as long as they had stopped, Shireen could just as well be left with people who had once harmed her, so he told Osha,

 

 

   “In her last letter she could hardly write. I wrote and made the promise we'd come if she wrote and said she needed help. It's been _more_ than long enough and she hasn't written. If she was alright, she'd have written.”

 

 

   “You can't go South and steal her, little soldier,” Osha said, too easily, so calmly it made his blood boil when she sat down on a rock by him as if she meant to tarry, and the hurt of _Osha_ of all people failing to understand burned through him with a violence he couldn't contain.

 

 

   “ _Yes we can_ \- we promised and we're going to - you can't stop us! No one else will protect her, no one else will help, so we will!” he shouted, Shaggydog snarling at his side, their minds as one that they would not be turned back, and Osha smiled at him softly and folded her hands in her lap.

 

 

   “No you can't, little one,” she said, and shook her head, and her eyes were kind and sad when she revealed,

 

 

   “They're coming for you.”

 

 

   “You told them - you led them - ” Rickon choked, clinging to Shaggy's fur hard and shrinking away from her and the winded, stomach-ache feeling of her treachery, and she shook her head again and smiled.

 

 

   “Not me; your brother.”

 

 

   “We'll run!” Rickon vowed, already clawing his way on to Shaggy's obliging back, and all she said was, quietly,

 

 

   “You can try.”

 

 

   They were just past their own furthest-reached point when Rickon's father and brothers rode them down.

 

 

   Their instinct was to fight, but fighting their own wasn't easily done - not even pushed to the edge of endurance and lack of reason by the utter _wrongness_ of being _hunted_ by their own pack - and even inextricably mingled by the heights of emotion and exertion as they were and running on the edge of the fear of being caught neither one of them could push past the bond of blood and bite deep enough to wound and escape.

 

 

   They tried all the same.

 

 

   It isn't in Rickon's nature to give in even when the cause is hopeless, especially in the heat of the moment, so they shed blood where it couldn't be avoided, but they were outnumbered and however clearly loath Jon and Robb were to lay hands on Rickon and hold him down whatever Ned's instructions, Ghost and Grey Wind were happy enough to keep Shaggy at bay so he couldn't help a thrashing, shrieking Rickon who did the best he could for himself even though he couldn't draw his knife against them, having enough control to keep from _that_ at least even if he did break Robb's nose with his knee and split Jon's lip with the back of his head when they tried to hold him between them, but the struggling was instinctual reaction in wrath to being caught like that more than true desire or hope to break free of them.

 

 

   They both knew they couldn't fight hard enough to escape, or run hard enough to lose them even if they did get loose. Ultimately, he and Shaggydog were subdued.

 

 

   It is the only time in Rickon's memory that his father has struck him.

 

 

   It hurt enough that it knocked his thoughts loose from Shaggydog's, but in the moment after it was clear to him that it hurt and appalled Ned worse than it injured Rickon himself. The pain of his cheek didn't even last the day, but Ned didn't speak to him for three.

 

 

   They herded Shaggydog back as though he was likely to try and escape them, as if he would when Rickon rode held in front of Ned so tightly it felt like his father was afraid to let him go lest he vanish into thin air, a silent, grim party making poor time as if the hunt of him had drained them completely, or else as though they were afraid to be seen returning with him.

 

 

   All the way back no one spoke except his brothers to each other, and that in undertones and infrequently - Ned never once said a word to Rickon for all he clung to his youngest child so hard it bruised.

 

 

   The words didn't come until they rode into Winterfell, Catelyn's wailing sending a flock of crows out of the godswood, competing with the final outpouring of Ned's tightly-leashed anger and bafflement that Rickon could do such a thing - hurt his poor mother so badly, frighten his sisters, make them all afraid for his life - but once they let up to hear the explanation they had demanded from him, their racket still ringing around the walls, Rickon simply refused to speak to them, as he had done since they failed to help him save Shireen, a thing they had not noticed and were thus even more perplexed and angered by when he would not break his silence, but when Catelyn at last dissolved into weeping when Rickon would not allow her to embrace him, a furious Ned decreed that a heavily-chained Shaggydog should be confined to the kennels and Rickon to his room until Rickon was willing to apologise and account for his behaviour.

 

 

   Even his parents' din of before combined could not have competed with the volume of Shaggydog and Rickon protesting the decision.

 

 

   Rickon only used the one word, but it applied to his parents as well as Jon, who stood drawn and haggard behind them, the only colour in his face the bruises and laceration Rickon had left there, beside a deeply worried, battered-looking Robb whose nose had already been re-set, and it contained all the rage and disenchantment in him.

 

 

   “ ** _Traitors_** ,” he named them, amplified by Shaggydog's ear-splitting howls as they hauled them both away each to their own prison, and neither one of them quieted for a day and a half, and only then when Rickon's voice gave out, something which terrified his mother so that she demanded he be restrained and the maester administer something to soothe his throat. Rickon did fight then, and purposely vomited the bitter draught back up as soon as they released him, out of pure spite, and in the face of this his father convinced Catelyn to abandon attempts at care until Rickon had exhausted himself enough to be reasoned with.

 

 

   They put him in another room to begin with, because they were busy walling up a part of Rickon's window to make it too narrow for him to ever fit through again. While he was locked in that room, Rickon destroyed everything in it, though there wasn't much but a bed and table, not unlike Shaggydog hurling his weight at the boarded gate of his kennel-cell to point of splintering, their inner turmoil identical.

 

 

   When they moved him, having to first subdue him again and carry him bodily a man to each of his limbs, his mother following at a distance and wringing her hands, begging them to take as much care as possible, Rickon tore his own room apart as well once left there, gripped by a desire for destruction and a dark, passionate hatred of their treatment of both he and Shaggydog, the wolf's desperate need to be free and mounting terror at being so confined looming in the back of his mind and gaping wide like a chasm of overwhelming fear, feeding into Rickon's outrage and augmenting both.

 

 

   He splintered his heavy chair by hurling it across the room, then tore the heavy iron andirons up from the ashes of his fireplace to batter at the door and into the freshly-laid stonework minimising his window opening, digging furiously at the new mortar, and when that proved futile throwing them each the length of the room to clang and screech against the opposite wall and on to the floor, then turned his bed over twice with an almighty heave each way to crack the posts off, the crashing racket satisfying his need to express his wrath even though he had no voice to speak it with any longer. Unable to wield the andirons for too long at a time, he resorted to hacking away at the wood around the lock to his door with the knife he'd been keeping under his bed, since his dagger had been confiscated by Ned days ago when they found him, but it was impossible to do enough damage to get through, and the same held true for his attack on the new stonework around his window - much of the mortar could be scraped and stabbed away, but not enough to pull loose any of the stones.

 

 

   He wore himself out eventually, losing consciousness at some point in the midst of the wreckage, but the moment his mother entered and stooped to hold him hoping he had calmed, he woke with a renewed rage in him, and she barely managed to retreat and close the door on him before he could rush at her, his anger blind enough in the moment that he would have bitten her if she hadn't been so quick. Through the slit of a window they'd left him, he could hear Shaggydog's crying, and he slipped into it without thinking, the separation added to his despair and anger too much to bear all together.

 

 

   _They had all failed him._

 

 

   His parents - unwilling to listen to him, to take his fears seriously, not even interested enough to pay note to the fact that he stopped speaking to them long before the marked change they'd seemed so pleased with came over him, completely blind to how obviously all was not well with their son and having paid so little attention to his distress when he tried to solicit their help on Shireen's behalf that they clearly had never even thought to link that instance to Rickon's later silence and odd new habits.

 

 

   Jon, his own _brother_ , had _deliberately_ sought to keep Rickon from helping Shireen - had known exactly what was happening and why Rickon _needed_ to go, and done nothing but work against him. No doubt it was Jon who had sounded the alarm.

 

 

   All that could be said for Jon was that he had obviously not refreshed Ned and Catelyn's memory of Rickon's fear for Shireen, or else they would surely have asked whether indeed Rickon was going South for that reason, and they never did, seeming to believe he was simply trying to run away - a completely ridiculous accusation they'd never have made, he thought, if they had ever bothered to understand him even a little. That Jon had kept Rickon's secret of why he must go South was not enough to absolve him of his treachery.

 

 

   Rickon could not forgive any of them.

 

 

   Here he lay, perhaps the only person in the world who cared that Shireen might be terribly hurt, that she was _alone_ , miles and miles away, and he could not fulfil his promise to help her or take her away.

 

 

   If ever he could, he thought viciously, he would _not_ take her back to Winterfell. They would go somewhere _else_ \- perhaps beyond the Wall where no one would think or be brave enough to go and look for them.

 

 

   Osha might come along, he thought. Osha had not tried to stop him. Osha had warned him that they were coming for him. She had tracked him because she thought he had run away like his parents had said he must have, not because she wanted to help them catch him. He did not have to forgive Osha, she had done nothing wrong.

 

 

   Shaggydog's echoing cries in his ears, Rickon settled into the nest of tatters that was his former bedding and sank into a haze of weary desolation.

 

 

   He did not stir when they unlocked the door later to see to him, and offer him food. They left it for him but he didn't touch it. He didn't eat until the next day and only then because Shaggydog was fed and it prompted Rickon to acknowledge the hunger burrowed into the pit of his own stomach, making him choke down the stew laid out in a bowl on the floor, since he'd ruined every surface but that which they might have stood it on, and drink the water in the skin beside it.

 

 

   Some time later he heard Catelyn outside the door, tearfully speaking to him, asking why he would run away, why he was so unhappy, why he would say such a horrible thing to his own parents, lamenting the strangeness of him since birth which had always so perplexed her and begging him to explain what it was that drove him to leave, but he never answered her.

 

 

   For the next few days, this went on. Rickon lived much like Shaggydog did, confined and hateful, angry and empty of anything but that, brooding on his broken promise and the weird, twisted dreams that came upon him whenever he sank into sullen, fitful bouts of sleep, dreams of storms and gales and salt, foreign and confused.

 

 

   They brought him food, which he ate thoughtlessly but neglected to even look at until Shaggydog was fed in the kennels, prompting the instinct to take nourishment in them both. His leavings, such as they were, were collected periodically. At regular intervals his mother would come and stand by the door and speak to him, apparently not brave enough to open the door and face him, and once his father came to take her away and reiterate his decision that Rickon was not to be let out until he had calmed down and was ready to explain his appalling behaviour and apologise for it.

 

 

   Rickon had no intention of doing either, and immersed in Shaggy's thoughts of anguished confinement and aggressive resentment at being thwarted on their adventure and kept restrained, he felt no incentive to do anything but eat when Shaggy did, and languish in their isolation, his sense of himself pared down to the essentials and ever more removed from the reality of which body was trapped where, only growling a little whenever his door was opened.

 

 

   The time came when Rickon was no longer sure whether it was outside his door or Shaggydog's that low voices called him a feral, savage, ungovernable, _unnatural_ thing that lord Ned should have taken in hand long ago, or which of them was meant, and he didn't care, either.

 

 

   Wood and stone blurred together, rough and heavily iron-bound no different to him than artfully hewn and carved inlaid with smith-work - all a prison, all inconsequential, one like the other in function and function all that mattered.

 

 

   His next real visitor was Jon, whispering through the door that he was sorry, asking Rickon to forgive him, excusing his betrayal with fear and trying to explain that he was afraid something terrible might happen to Rickon and so he had to tell, he _had_ to, but Rickon gave no answer, and eventually Jon slunk away, his upset palpable even through four inches of wood.

 

 

   Then came Arya, scratching at the door and hissing his name, late in the evening judging by the dying light in the sliver of window left open, telling him not to worry, that she was wearing their father down to let him out, and that she'd see him free soon, and that Robb wasn't upset anymore about his nose and had forgiven Rickon, that they were all just worried about him and wanted him out.

 

 

   Rickon came close to replying when she whispered that she missed him, closer to himself than he had been since he was locked up, but in the end the effort to speak was too much, and when he tried nothing came but a thin whine, and he wasn't sure whether it was to be heard here or in the kennels anyway.

 

 

   Morning brought Sansa, sniffling but more resolute in voice than he could recall her usually being, telling him off for giving her such a scare, _and poor mother_ , before at last trailing off to silence before the strained, tearful question, seeping past the lock,

 

 

   “ _Why_ did you do it, Rickon? _Why_ did you run away from us? Don't you love us anymore?”

 

 

   Consciousness having hovered somewhere between the musty room and the mustier cell far below, Rickon drifted back into his own head, brought back by the change in tone and the realisation that Sansa had ceased her recriminations, and it was enough to raise his head from his paws and have him turn to face the door, through which came the plaintive,

 

 

   “I know you think I'm stupid, and I'm not always good to you but that's because I don't really _understand_ you, Rickon, and you don't like to do any of the things I like, but I do _love_ you - I don't know what I would have done if you had got lost, or been hurt. I was _sure_ you must have died out there all alone - I was so scared... Were you _really_ trying to leave us forever? Do you really hate us?”

 

 

   With a sigh, he dragged himself to the door and curled up next to it against the stone of the arch, and Sansa paused and sniffed again, and then very softly asked,

 

 

   “Rickon? Can you hear me?”

 

 

   When he tried to tell her yes, nothing intelligible passed his lips, just a dry scratch of a sound, but he put his hand to the door and tapped once, and after a moment, Sansa's voice came low and soft, warmer than before.

 

 

   “We're going to get you out. We'll speak to father again. I don't understand why you ran but you shouldn't be locked away, or Shaggy either. It would be so horrible if that happened to Lady - you must be so upset...”

 

 

   He dug his nails into the grain of the door, and waited, eyes closed.

 

 

   “Are you very lonely in there? Shall I sing you a song?” she asked after a while, and although he said nothing, she began to sing very quietly through the gap between door and stone, one of the songs Catelyn had sometimes tried to sing to him when he was a restive baby but which had never calmed him much.

 

 

   Sansa's version was different and her voice a gentler note. When Rickon woke again it was because the door opened right next to his head and his mother's skirt brushed his cheek as she entered to bring him food, but he shrank against the wall and hid in the gloom from her, eliciting a cry of shock when she saw that he was not lying in the heap of his ruined bed anymore, and prompting her to turn frantically to search the dim corners of the room for him only to spot him where she had just passed and not thought to look down.

 

 

   In the kennels, they were trying to move Shaggydog into another cell so they could clean the one he had been imprisoned in. In the half-light and the haze of deep sleep coupled with Shaggy's sudden snarling rage at being cornered and boxed in and transferred against his will, Rickon reacted to his mother's advances by snapping at her hands when she reached for him.

 

 

   Her cry brought in Robb and Grey Wind in a rush of fur and a swirl of cloak, and Rickon was dragged back and away just as Shaggy's chains were pulled and his head forced back, and to Rickon's mind it felt as though he was being strangled, and whatever sound he made to reflect this terrified Catelyn so much that she screamed for Robb to release him, and Rickon fell on to the floor gasping for air, Grey Wind's warm tongue soothing his neck and his mother's sobs next to his ear as she gathered him up and cradled him until he could breathe again, and then another vile draught was being put to his lips and he was too frantic with Shaggydog's terror to fight it, the sticky liquid running down his neck as he spasmed involuntarily, limbs both too short and too weak to feel entirely his own beyond his control as they tried to echo movement they were not connected to or built to emulate.

 

 

   Not strong enough to contain all this, Rickon left the waking world for a time, his last conscious thought the sensation of flesh breaking between his teeth and blood filling his mouth and removing the tang of the draught he'd been given.

 

 

   He came to wrapped up tightly in fresh clothes, his hair damp across his forehead and Sansa's humming in his ears, the comforting weight of direwolf anchoring his legs to the mattress.

 

 

   Too exhausted to do more than look at her, she noticed his gaze only when Lady whined and disturbed her in her sewing, which she laid aside to run from the room. Returning shortly thereafter with Robb and Bran, the direwolves set to examining his room, which a disinterested glance told him had been cleared of debris while he slept.

 

 

   “Shaggydog bit one of the men who helped move him,” Robb said gravely,

 

 

   “Farlen says it was his own damn fault for using the whip when he oughtn't 've and it's not the _beast's_ fault he wouldn't stand for it, but father's had to pay the family because the man can't work until he's healed and his leg'll never be right again.”

 

 

   The bruises across his eyes and the purpling of the bridge of his nose gave his face a mask-like appearance, not faded enough yet to be dignified, but Rickon didn't comment.

 

 

   “You bit mother,” Bran told him softly, eyes wide and serious,

 

 

   “Must have been at the same time. She doesn't think you meant to because you were startled, so she isn't angry, but father's worried. He thinks you've gone mad.”

 

 

   Rickon said nothing, eyes seeking the tiny window and the light it barely let into the room.

 

 

   “Why were you running?” Robb demanded, voice rough with emotion, drawing Rickon's impassive gaze back to him,

 

 

   “You never said anything - if you were unhappy you could have told us, we'd have helped you talk to mother and father if there was something wrong, but you just left! Why did you just _leave?_ ”

 

 

   “Sansa and Arya don't think you were trying to run away, and neither does Jon, but he won't talk about it,” Bran shared unhappily, mouth twisted as he looked down at Rickon, his hair falling into his face, and from the foot of the bed, Sansa huffed.

 

 

   “Of course he wasn't running away! He's a lord of Winterfell,” she insisted haughtily,

 

 

   “Besides, Rickon leaves all the time. He always comes back. He just went alone this time, that's all, isn't that right, Rickon? You were going to come back _eventually_.”

 

 

   Her question was certain, pompously so, as if fully expecting him to agree and hold up her point, an uncharacteristic show of backbone in Robb's presence, but the slight tremor of her final statement was what made him look at her, the laboured, poorly-hidden hope that he would agree lighting her eyes.

 

 

   “Eventually...” he echoed, his voice a cracked rasp, and she put her hands on her hips in triumph.

 

 

   “There, see? He wasn't really running away. We'll tell father, and he'll understand,” she said, sweeping from the room, leaving him under the sombre watch of Robb and Bran, the latter's gaze disturbingly intent.

 

 

   Soon enough they were joined by Catelyn and Ned, who waved Robb and Bran away and took up his own post by the foot of Rickon's bed while Catelyn perched next to Rickon and adjusted the pillow behind his head, fussing with the curls around his face for a moment, her touch very light.

 

 

   “I'm told there's been a misunderstanding,” Ned opened, face severe, new lines carved there since last Rickon scrutinised him, but in the moment he regarded his father with no more than passing interest, drained of emotion.

 

 

   “Is it true, my sweet; you never really meant to run away from us at all? You were going to come back all along?” Catelyn asked, her voice barely more than a whisper, huge tears poised to fall from her eyes and likely on to him the way she hovered, and Rickon hitched one of his shoulders.

 

 

   “Eventually,” he said again, re-using Sansa's word, not thinking they needed to know the finer points of his original intentions or in a frame of mind to explain that he had since decided that he would in fact not have returned here if his mission had been a success, but the one word was enough to see his mother bend double over him and pour forth into his collar, patting at his arms and face and then turning to Ned in relief to plead,

 

 

   “See, I _knew_ it had to be a mistake - he never meant to go so far, did you my baby? You were only out on one of your little trips and you went the wrong way, isn't that right?” but though she directed the questions at Rickon, he didn't respond to them, watching Ned's stern stance and demeanour instead, and when Ned asked pointedly,

 

 

   “Is that true? Where _were_ you going, Rickon?” it occurred to Rickon that he had to be clever now lest they lock him away forever or send Shaggydog into the wilds alone, or some other stupid and dreadful thing out of fear and lack of understanding, and so Rickon thought to one of the things he had seen on the map, and harked back to some of Sansa's prattling about what she'd most like to see in all the world, and he said,

 

 

   “I wanted to see the king.”

 

 

   “The king?” Catelyn repeated, dumbfounded, but Ned's frown shifted from interrogating to uncomprehending, and he also repeated,

 

 

   “The king?”

 

 

   “In the South,” Rickon confirmed,

 

 

   “From Sansa's song. I wanted to see.”

 

 

   “But my _baby_ , that is _hundreds_ of miles away to the South, what made you think you could go there on your own?” Catelyn asked, nonplussed, and Rickon just looked at them.

 

 

   “It doesn't look so far on the map,” he said simply. Nothing of Dragonstone in the sea. Nothing of Shireen. Just a child's silly fancy, a whim taken too far. Nothing that would reveal his true feelings or intentions to them. They had proven they could not be trusted to understand and did not think him capable of such depths, so he would play to their image of him as a wayward tot with no concept of reality. Let them think him simpler than he was, Rickon thought spitefully. Let them. They always had before.

 

 

   “Why did you go alone?” Ned demanded, clearly baffled, and Rickon frowned.

 

 

   “I had Shaggydog,” he reminded them, taking care not to seem angry at having his most trusted and dependable ally, a facet of himself, discounted like that, and then he asked, as if he hadn't known exactly where he was, as if in fact he had been trying to go to King's Landing to do something as pointless as gawk at a king who didn't even matter in the North and was just an old friend of Ned's anyway,

 

 

   “Weren't we almost there?”

 

 

   “No,” Ned had said slowly, shaking his head as though the workings of a child's mind were incomprehensible enough to put him on the back foot,

 

 

   “No, you went in the right direction, but it would have taken many, many days to complete such a journey, Rickon. You might have starved or been attacked on the way - anything could have happened to you in that time if we had not found you.”

 

 

   “I know north from south,” Rickon informed them, choosing not to address everything his father had said,

 

 

   “Osha taught me. Next time I go out, I'll take her. Then I'll be safe.”

 

 

   “That _wildling_ ,” Catelyn hissed contemptuously, but Ned just held up his hand and then looked more closely at Rickon, with great concern.

 

 

   “So you understand then, that you caused us all a great deal of fright when you went missing, and that you're not to go out unaccompanied again?” he asked, as if he was making sure to keep it very simple for Rickon's sake, and Rickon nodded.

 

 

   “And you weren't trying to run away at all, were you my sweet, you just wanted to see the king?” Catelyn asked, as if desiring to get it all straight for her own sake, and Rickon nodded again.

 

 

   “That was a very silly thing to do, Rickon, and I don't quite understand why you thought it was possible - hasn't the maester told you anything about the size of things in reality not being the same as what it looks like on maps?” Ned asked, as if the thought had suddenly struck him, and Rickon shook his head.

 

 

   “No.”

 

 

   “I shall have to have a talk with him,” Ned murmured, expression turning very dark, and then he sighed and only said,

 

 

   “Very well. We cannot punish you for something you did not know was wrong. Now you know, and now you know that you cannot go to King's Landing alone, and you have promised not to run off again without taking someone older with you for safety. That will have to answer for it, for now.”

 

 

   “Why did you call us that awful word when you came home, my baby? What made you do that?” Catelyn chimed in, nervous as if expecting an answer she was not ready for, and Rickon could have given one, but again, he decided it was better to be clever, to let them think him less than he was, so they would underestimate him, and so he only said,

 

 

   “All the bad people in the stories get called that. I thought it was a bad word. I was angry.”

 

 

   “Oh...” Catelyn uttered, perplexed for a moment and then, more lightly,

 

 

   “ _Oh_... well, it _is_ a bad word, my heart, but it's for a certain _kind_ of bad thing. We can explain it later, when you're not so tired, if you'd like.”

 

 

   “I want Shaggydog,” Rickon said, not pursuing the issue when it didn't matter, content to let his mother think he wasn't interested in learning the true meaning of the word because it was too complex, making himself small and his voice plaintive and his eyes large, gazing up at his mother and then beseechingly at Ned, hoping to jar their sympathy now that they seemed convinced they had at least done him a misdeed in trying to punish him for something they had the wrong end of,

 

 

   “Can I have Shaggydog? He didn't do anything wrong either.”

 

 

   It was too much to ask. Ned's face grew bleak and Catelyn withdrew, and Rickon knew what the answer would be.

 

 

   “The wolf stays in the kennels until you can go and retrieve him yourself, and you are to stay here until you are better,” Ned said sternly,

 

 

   “I won't have the animal in the living quarters unsupervised coming and going.”

 

 

   “He'd be with me!” Rickon protested, but to no avail.

 

 

   “He would have to go out for meals and to relieve himself, and you are to stay here for a few days more so we can be certain your little fit has not done any damage,” Ned decreed,

 

 

   “You are not to go out until we let you, and so the wolf stays in the kennels. Catelyn, let the boy rest.”

 

 

   Pouting, Rickon could do nothing but look away when his mother tried to embrace him in farewell, and then close his eyes, wanting them gone now so he could be alone with his thoughts and the wound of separation in his chest after so many days of comforting, right-seeming sameness and togetherness, and as expected his parents only went the length of the room before they began to converse in low tones about him as though he wasn't able to hear or understand them a few metres from his bed just because he was not looking at them.

 

 

   “We will have to talk about what is and is not appropriate for Rickon to be told and to learn,” his father said, sounding aggravated,

 

 

   “Putting ideas into his head - he is clearly too young still to appreciate things like distance and the concept of time - I don't believe he has any idea how long he was away for, or how far from home he'd gone when we found him, and I doubt the influence of that damn wolf helps the matter!”

 

 

   And then his mother, softer, wheedling,

 

 

   “Of course not, he's still barely more than a baby - but we can't take the animal away from him, Ned, it would be cruel when he loves him so much. He _belongs_ to Rickon now, he'd be so upset if he wasn't allowed him. It's been so good for the children to have theirs, I'm sure he'll grow out of all this wildness if we just have patience...”

 

 

   “He _isn't_ a _baby_ , Catelyn,” Ned said crossly, causing Rickon a brief moment of smugness at this unusual observation of his father's before he recalled that for his purposes it was better for them to think him mostly a baby still, which rather soured it, and then Ned sighed heavily again and with sad apology went on,

 

 

   “But you're right, we can't take the wolf from him. He barely seems to like us as it is, he'd never forgive us that. He loves the blasted creature too much. More than he does us, I sometimes worry.”

 

 

   “It's just because he's so young. Small children have all manner of strange ideas, like this seeing the king business. They're very emotional. They get upset easily over little things they don't even remember later, they use words in anger without fully understanding them, they throw fits... It won't last,” Catelyn insisted, but even to Rickon's ears it sounded hollow, like clutching at straws.

 

 

   “You're right. Of course, you're right. We needn't worry. We'll keep an eye on him, that's all,” Ned mumbled, muffled as though by hands, and then the sound of a kiss, and Rickon's parents went from the room, leaving him to sleep, the last thing he heard as they left Catelyn's remark that she personally blamed Jon for all the stories about the war and going south and kings turning Rickon's mind to such strange ideas, and it struck Rickon as funny that she'd think that when Jon had only been harping on the theme to discourage Rickon from going.

 

 

   He did sleep, for a time, but not long enough to finish the vague, imposed sentence of ' _until you're better_ ', and when he woke it was to Jon edging into the room with Ghost and Rickon couldn't help glaring at him fiercely, glad when it made Jon cringe.

 

 

   It wasn't enough to send him packing, though, so Rickon was forced to bear his traitor brother sitting gingerly next to him, and the awful pleading look on his traitor face.

 

 

   “Go away,” Rickon demanded,

 

 

   “I hate you. This is your fault.”

 

 

   Jon's face contorted in misery and guilt, but he stayed.

 

 

   “Rickon, I'm _so_ sorry - I never told them anything, but I was so scared you'd come to harm, I _had_ to tell them you'd gone. Please understand - if something had happened to you and I had known you were out there on your own - ”

 

 

   “Not _alone_ ; with Shaggy,” Rickon corrected him harshly, setting Jon's head nodding frantically to cover his mistake.

 

 

   “Yes, of course with Shaggy, sorry, I didn't mean - _I_ know you can do so much more than anyone thinks and you're very clever and you're stronger than you look and you know how to take care of yourself in the wild, but Rickon, you're _so_ young, and you're my little brother - if you had been hurt, and I'd known you were gone, I could never forgive myself. I'd feel like it was my fault, always. I could never face Robb and Arya, or Bran - your mother... Can you understand that?” he asked, eyes wet and full of unhappy expectation, and Rickon told him what he did understand.

 

 

   “If bad things happen to Shireen where she is _all alone_ with _no one_ to protect her, _that's_ your fault for stopping me when _we_ could have helped her. It's your fault I'm trapped and me and Shaggy are locked up.”

 

 

   Jon closed his eyes like Rickon had slapped him, and breathed in deeply through his nose.

 

 

   “I know. I can accept that. I can't accept knowing that I let you go out into the world with no one but Shaggydog to help you do something even an army might have trouble managing, when you could have been badly hurt trying,” he said gravely.

 

 

   “Just one is sneakier than an army - less likely to be noticed, Osha says,” Rickon informed him stiffly, feeling Jon hadn't earned the effort of Rickon educating him to this fact, and reminding him,

 

 

   “You could have come and helped.”

 

 

   The sadness on Jon's face wasn't a kind Rickon recognised, but it dripped from his eyes and his voice when he quietly replied,

 

 

   “I'm not as brave as you, Rickon . I'm sorry for that, too.”

 

 

   When he stood to leave, Rickon told him,

 

 

   “I haven't forgiven you.”

 

 

   “That's fine, I understand,” Jon had said with a smile that didn't match the dark of his gaze,

 

 

   “You're safe. I can live with the rest.”

 

 

   That was several days past.

 

 

   Since then, Rickon has been confined to his bed - his new bed, since his old one was a lost cause after his wrathful fit of destruction.

 

 

   His family have been running a concentrated campaign to keep him in it and occupied, to take his mind off his restlessness and his yearning for Shaggydog. It has not been helping one bit.

 

 

   His days are all the same. Sansa sits with him in the morning and does her sewing. Then Arya comes and plays games with him, trying to teach him ones he's never bothered to learn or play before because they involve too much sitting down. Bran comes at midday to read to him, then Robb and Jon and sometimes Theon come to regale him about things that are going on in the castle - accidents in the yard and kittens being born and cooks slapping fingers out of bread baskets and the like, the intricacies of pinching milkmaids. Daily goings-on which interest Rickon not much at all and never really have. Later, Osha comes and tells him about things he _does_ want to know, sitting by or on his bed with him, carving him things from bits of wood, or teaching him wildling things, stories and songs and things about trees and the sea.

 

 

   Rickon especially likes to hear tales of the sea. He thinks that's what he's dreaming of most nights now - a vastness beyond comprehension, tangy with salt and dark green weeds wrapping around him, storms so wild he doesn't know if the sky is just more ocean far, far above, reaching down to the tempest covering the earth and swallowing everything. It distracts him from thoughts of failing Shireen, at least.

 

 

   In between though, he reaches for Shaggydog. They are both bored, both restless, both a little afraid that this imprisonment will last forever, that they will never be allowed to run free again, and missing the familiarity of sameness and connection. Despite Rickon's begging his window has not been opened up again. The new stonework, though quite damaged by his assault on it, remains, keeping the air and light out, keeping him in.

 

 

   So small is the window now that a bird has taken up residence in the space between the new stones and the old sill, on the outside, and Rickon can hear and sometimes see it quite clearly flitting back and forth and going about its business. He doesn't want it there - it's noisy at all the wrong times of day and it steals even more of his light and air by being in the way so often. More than that, Rickon resents its freedom, and the way it seems to brag about it, gaily flitting about at will, making as much racket as it likes.

 

 

   There comes a time when Rickon grows so thoroughly sick of the bird warbling at him that he abandons reaching for Shaggydog and instead concentrates all his will on the stupid creature, sitting up in the bed his family won't let him leave and shouting,

 

 

   “Shut up or go away!”

 

 

   He can't _throw_ anything at it, that isn't possible. He just turns all his ferocious resentful will to making it stop its noise and leave him be so he doesn't feel he's being taunted by something so wild and unbound anymore, just beyond his own prison.

 

 

   The bird shuts up because Rickon wanted it to shut up. Rickon is on the sill amidst twigs and bits of fur and the world is before his eyes, strangely expanded, and Rickon is not speaking so the bird is quiet, hopping from one foot to the other, quirking its head.

 

 

   Rickon is the bird.

 

 

   He's so surprised, he sits down hard on his bed again, and the moment is lost, but as soon as it's gone he reaches for it again, with the same feeling of throwing not an object but his own force of will at the animal, to make it do what he wants.

 

 

   The second time is easier now that he knows what he's doing. The bird moves even though Rickon is not moving, but Rickon is the one making the bird move. It hops up and down the sill and peers in through the little opening left, providing a distorted second view of his room from an angle he can't see from where he's lying, though it overlaps his oddly as though he's seeing double.

 

 

   He tries a few times, being the bird, and not, and moving about as the bird, and not, and then making a noise as the bird.

 

 

The bird makes a noise. Rickon whoops in delight.

 

 

   It takes him a while to fly as the bird. He has to concentrate harder to stay because it's so distracting - the feeling of flying is so alien, it jars him out of the experience, and then he has to wait for the bird to return to the sill again within range, because any further doesn't seem to work as well. He doesn't know this bird well enough to reach it from a long way away. This bird isn't special, not like Shaggydog, who is truly _part_ of Rickon, who _is_ Rickon, sometimes. This bird is more like a tool, and Rickon has to learn to use it.

 

 

   He works at it though. When Bran comes on that first day to read to him he thinks Rickon is asleep because he's lying down with his eyes closed, so he leaves again, but Rickon is not asleep.

 

 

   He is flying.

 

 

   By the third day, Rickon can be the bird even when he's not trying very hard - even when Arya is playing a game with him - without it affecting his other actions or taking up too much of his concentration.

 

 

   By the fourth day, Rickon can make it so that the bird flies into the kennels, to hop about and pluck bits of fur off the ground, and by the fifth day he works out how to make the bird follow the kennel master and void its bowels in midair to land on the man's head, fair payment for his part in Shaggydog's continued captivity.

 

 

   On the sixth day, he tells Osha.

 

 

   “I can be a bird if I want, Osha,” he says,

 

 

   “That bird outside my window. I can make it talk. I can fly inside it if I want to.”

 

 

   Her knife pauses in whittling the little boat she is making for him, and she lays the wood aside carefully to give him her full, shrewd attention.

 

 

   “Is that right, little lord?” she muses,

 

 

   “That is a clever trick.”

 

 

   “It's not a trick, I can really do it,” he insists, and she watches him with absolute gravity, nodding.

 

 

   “I believe you,” she says quietly, voice very low,

 

 

   “But that's a _very_ rare gift, little lord. Very precious. Best keep it between us, for now.”

 

 

   “Yes,” he agrees - he's learnt not to trust others with his secrets lightly. He has told Osha this only because he trusts her to shed light on it, and to keep it a secret otherwise -

 

 

   “What does it mean?”

 

 

   “It means you're more than you seem,” she tells him sombrely,

 

 

   “Try not to get lost in the bird.”

 

 

   “I won't,” Rickon scoffs,

 

 

   “It's not nearly as good as Shaggydog, anyway. All it does is fly.”

 

 

   He doesn't know why that should make Osha laugh, though it does, but he doesn't quite like how she hugs him too tightly when she laughs, or how relieved she sounds, so he doesn't talk about the bird anymore after that.

 

 

   He still uses it, but only to spy on what's going on in the castle, and even though flying is fun, it isn't like the hunt - it can't ever get into his blood in the same way, he doesn't think. Flying is too silly. Too _clean_.

 

 

   Still he practices, hoping that if he can do this with this one bird, maybe he can eventually do it with a raven, and maybe in time fly as far as Dragonstone and spy on Shireen personally to protect her and peck out the eyes of anyone who tries to hurt her. It is a happy dream, and it occupies him for a number of days, until finally his parents lift his quarantine, and tell him he is free to dress properly and go to the kennels to collect Shaggydog.

 

 

   In the whirlwind of dressing, he barely notices when Arya comes running with something in her hand, shoving it at him breathlessly with a,

 

 

   “Jon said give you this,” and then a wild laugh of,

 

 

   “Hurry down so we can all play - Nymeria's waiting!” and then she tears off again.

 

 

   Rickon almost discards the papery little thing she handed him simply because she said it was from Jon, and he wants none of his half-brother, still angry with him and likely to be angry always, he thinks, but the papery feel of it is broken by an odd waxy lump, and he realises just before he tosses it away as he's shoving on his boots _what_ it feels like.

 

 

   It feels like what it is. A letter.

 

 

   He can hear Nymeria's howling in the yard, happy and excited, but Shaggydog's answer is not for her - it's for the roar of the sea in Rickon's ears and the scent of salt.

 

 

   _Dear Rickon_ \- she has written, the runes hurried but not shaky, not smudged with blood this time, cramped but with only a single blotch of water having marred the ink further down -

 

 

_Your letter took a long time to come because of the storms. The ravens couldn't cross the sea. I am so sorry you had to wait and **so** sorry you were so worried. I never meant to worry you, or for you to be afraid for me. I promise I am safe and well and there is no need for concern or to try and save me - I don't know if that would even be possible, but I believe you would try, just as you say. I believe in you. I don't know how to thank you for caring enough to worry about my safety, but please don't and please don't try to come here just you and Shaggydog - it is such a long way and if something happened to you both I couldn't bear it. I could never forgive myself. You are my first and best friend. I couldn't bear you being hurt trying to help me. I **promise** there is no need. I didn't mean to make you afraid for me by mentioning the dreams and lessons - I don't have those lessons so much now because it hurt my hands, and I am going with my father to King's Landing soon to see my uncle the king, so maybe when I leave Dragonstone for the first time, my dragon dreams will stop as well! I don't know if there will be time to get a reply if you send one to here, but I will write to you from King's Landing and tell you all about it. I promise to take care. Thank you for wanting to protect me and for caring enough to promise. Thank you for saying I should be with you. I do want to be. I will ask my father. Maybe now we are to travel, we can also visit Winterfell. I would like that more than anything in the world, much more than seeing my cousins and uncle I want to see **you**. You are the bravest best kindest person I know. Please don't be afraid - Shireen._

 

 

   It feels like flying, only a thousand **_thousand_** times better.

 

 

   Osha needn't fear; he could never lose himself in _birds_ when there's this, and Shaggydog, so he reaches for his other half, stuffs the letter into his pocket, and runs like flying down to the yard and to the kennels, and he doesn't care about the whispers or the staring of the people he passes, or the things they say, words like _possessed_ and _savage_ \- he is Shireen's first, best friend. The kindest, bravest, _best_ person she knows, even though she believes he would have gone South, even though she didn't make the mistake about how he would have been alone but _included_ Shaggydog like she understands and thinks it makes perfect sense.

 

 

   She thinks _more_ of him for all those things, not less. She doesn't think he couldn't do it if he wanted, doesn't say he _couldn't_ , just that it would be _difficult_ and she would be afraid for his safety as he's been for hers, should he attempt it. She has faith in him, and he understands now what that means.

 

 

   He unbolts the door to Shaggy's cell as people hurry out of his way, and delights in the direwolf's spring to freedom, dragging in big lungfuls of air as he laughs and laughs, and tumbles with _his_ best, first friend.

 

 

   Shireen is going to see the king, but she'd rather see Rickon.

 

 

   Shireen is _safe_ and Rickon is _free_.

 

 

   Free of walls and fear and even the ground if he wants to be, Rickon knows how long it takes a strong bird to fly to King's Landing, and how to make that happen. Shireen believes he could go to her if he wanted, and he will prove her trust well-placed.

 

 

   She wants him to be careful, but what he can do better is be _creative_. He's heard ravens used to be able to speak - Bran told him so.

 

 

   He doesn't believe there's a bird alive that has a strength of will to match his and resist if he wants to make use of that knowledge, and even if King's Landing is probably not a patch on Winterfell in the same way no bird is a patch on a direwolf, it is _closer_ , and Rickon has time.

 

 

   The crows take to the air from the godswood, frightened at the sound of Rickon's revelry, as well they should be. It extends even to a certain warmth towards Jon, who after all can't help being a coward, and whose depth of concern Rickon understands better now and sympathises with after reading that Shireen feels a similar concern for Rickon's safety, her words so like Jon's that she couldn't bear if Rickon had been hurt on her account, and so when Rickon catches Jon's eye across the yard when he looks up from something small in his hand, the abject relief on his brother's face is amplified when Rickon's brilliant, sharp grin doesn't diminish in the slightest despite his having offered Jon no forgiveness for his betrayal yet.

 

 

   Shireen's letter and good news in his pocket and fresh air in his lungs and Shaggydog slavering all over his face and pressing his ribs flat with giant paws in his joyful reunion is enough to make Rickon magnanimous.

 

 

   To a point, he thinks with vengeful mirth, as a crow wheeling overhead lets drop right on to Jon's face.

 

 

   To a _point._

 

 

   -

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In accordance with the new health-preservation rule, nothing gets updated until the most recent chapters of everything have at least three notes.


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